REBECCA WILSON | From Epic Retirement

Retirement planning is not one-size-fits-all. In this episode, I'm joined by Rebecca Wilson, author of the bestselling book How to Have an Epic Retirement, and host of the Primetime podcast. Rebecca shares her expertise on preparing for retirement, both financially and emotionally, and discusses the six pillars of an epic retirement.

Rebecca emphasizes that retirement is a transition that should be approached with a well-rounded perspective. She likens the anticipation of retirement to the period before having a first child—exciting yet filled with unknowns. By understanding and preparing for these changes, individuals can navigate their retirement years with confidence and joy.

We chatted about:

- The importance of starting retirement planning early, ideally around age 48 or when children become independent.

- The complexities of financial advice and the need for consumers to understand their unique situations.

- How to leverage the age pension and superannuation for financial stability in retirement.

- The significance of health and well-being, including exercise and balance training, to ensure a fulfilling retirement.

- The role of happiness and fulfillment, distinguishing between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness.

- Travel and other pursuits as part of a joyful and meaningful retirement.

- The importance of planning for housing and care needs as one ages.

Rebecca also introduces her educational program designed to help individuals prepare for retirement with confidence. The program includes online content, live events, and interactive learning opportunities.

For more insights and resources, visit Rebecca's website and check out her book How to Have an Epic Retirement.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chloe: Shares for beginners Phil Muscatello and Fin pods are authorised reps of Money Sherpa. The information in this podcast is general in nature and doesn't take into account your personal situation.

Rebecca Wilson: What do you need when you're coming into retirement? It really depends who you are, what you have and where you want to go. And it's a very different discussion for every individual. And I wish we could make this a simpler discussion because each vested interest tends to push and pull the person in a particular direction towards products and services that may or may not be right for them.

Phil: G'day and welcome back to shares for beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello and I recently had the great honour, uh, of hosting the Australian Shareholders association annual conference. I met m many wonderful people, including my next guest, Rebecca Wilson. G'day, Beck.

Rebecca Wilson: Hello, Phil. Thanks for having me.

Phil: Oh, thanks for coming on. It's great to see you from sunny Brisbane, where I believe the temperature is really a lot warmer than here in.

Rebecca Wilson: Sydney, quite probably now.

Phil: Beck Wilson is the author of the bestselling book how to have an epic retirement. She's the host of the primetime podcast and a weekly columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age money section. And we're going to be talking about having an epic retirement, which hurtles very fast towards a lot of people, doesn't it, Bec?

Rebecca Wilson: It does. It's really exciting and not one that we've talked about in so much positivity before, I don't think so.

Phil: What happens when you're down tools? For the last time, what are the sort of things that listeners should be aware of emotionally, spiritually and financially?

Rebecca Wilson: Well, look, I talk at length and I know we're going to talk about it today, about there being the six pillars of an epic retirement, that there's a whole well rounded way of looking at your retirement years. But more important than that, I'll start with how it feels before you get there. The anticipation leading up to retirement for many people is huge, right? The only time of life I can relate it back to, and I haven't retired yet, but I've met an awful lot of retirees and they say it's almost the same as the period before they had their first, uh, child. The feeling of going into a whole new phase of life where everything's going to be different, it's all going to be unknown, the money's going to work differently, the time's going to work differently, the things you do are going to work differently, and you don't know what you don't know. And so if you're good at it, you look at it through rose colored glasses, right? You go, oh, uh, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be epic, right? It's going to be amazing. But we all know the other side of having our first child that the baby screams, it doesn't feed right, it doesn't sleep, right. You don't sleep. You know, there's all these periods of change where we have to get used to it. And so I've sort of want people to understand that about retirement. I want people to sit back and go, hey, there's a whole lot of things that if you learn them before you get there, you can kind of know what's coming at you when you get into the phases of retirement. It does feel for some people beforehand, very exciting, but then afterwards, like this great big hole has opened, opened up in their lives and there's ways to prevent that hole really permeating your soul by preparing a bit earlier.

Phil: So what sort of age should people start thinking about it? I mean, you've got to think about it financially, obviously, as well, but in terms of the emotional headspace that you've got to develop for yourself.

Rebecca Wilson: Look, I'm writing my second book at the moment and it's called Prime Time. And the podcast that I make is called prime time, not epic retirement for a very important reason. I think that retirement as a concept is changing. I think we're starting to want to live a more flexible life from earlier, but we have to be able to find financial certainty to be able to live that. And it doesn't necessarily mean we'll stop doing what we love doing when we give up the formal need to work. Right? And that's something I would like everybody to feel quite flexible about the concept of retiring. Because when you look up the definition of retirement, it means to grow old and leave your job. And that's not the definition of retirement. I want people to start to think about in their futures. I personally put the line at about 48 for where we should start preparing. Or when your kids get their pee plates because you really can't see yourself in the mirror until your kids can drive themselves around. I don't think it sounds awfully if.

Phil: They get their license. A lot of them don't get their licenses these days.

Rebecca Wilson: Queensland, we get them early. But I think importantly, when kids become independent, parents become independent again. And that allows you to build a portfolio of things you do again, because in those middle years of life, your portfolio, uh, quite often becomes about what the kids are doing and what you need to do to be a part of their communities and your communities, and the active phase of just juggling work, kids, family and obligations. But then you build this new portfolio of activities that you like to do, some of which will be work. All of it could be work at the first phases, but then it allows you that flexibility to lean into things you like doing, do more things for enjoyment, and start to move towards retirement as a choice. Because at the moment, the statistics say only 31% of people actually choose to retire, according to the retirement intention survey by the ABS. So we've got a job to do to try and help people think more consciously about what they want a modern retirement to look like. And I'll tell you why in a minute. When we talk about those pillars, what does that mean?

Phil: Only 31% actually retire by choice. Oh, so, okay, by choice.

Rebecca Wilson: Yeah, by choice. So the rest, uh, are retiring because they, 8% of women end up caring for a partner or family member, 4% of men. So they'll leave suddenly because somebody needs care and they'll actually think they might be going back to the workforce, and then they don't. Some of them, they just go, oh, well, it happened. I retired and others got retrenched and just decided to never go back or couldn't find because of ageism and other challenges in the workplace. There's so many other reasons that, in fact, the only statistical number that's actually really quite significant is that 31%.

Phil: No, I threw a question at you at the conference. Uh, we were just having a chat and we didn't have a chance to talk about it, but I was talking to a financial adviser recently and I said to him, what happens most people when they retire? Do they go get a financial adviser or what do they usually do? And he said, well, generally they just talk to their superannuation fund and the fund puts them into an income stream and sometimes it's not the best option. But you had some thoughts about that, that it was a lot more complex than that little picture that I was painting.

Rebecca Wilson: Look. Yeah, I think financial advice is a very mixed up and confusing world for the consumer at the moment. And I m really hope the government not only gets the legislation right, but also educates people, because we have a really big problem that if we leave it to everybody with a vested interest, the consumer is never going to know what's right for them. Right. So we've got 70% of people in Australia today in a profit for member fund or thereabouts from what I understand, about 25% are in retail funds and private client advice and then we would have a portion of those profit for member funds. People would be getting independent advice as well, right? So maybe 40 ish percent, I'd say, of people over 50 in Australia are getting financial advice. From my statistics, people across the spectrum in Australia are definitely not getting it at that rate because there's not enough advisors. But what do you need when you're coming into retirement? It really depends who you are, what you have and where you want to go. And it's a very different discussion for every individual. And I wish we could make this a simpler discussion because each vested interest tends to push and pull the person in a particular direction towards products and services that may or may not be right for them. What the consumer needs to understand is how complex their situation is. Do they plan to come through retirement with a simple investment in an industry fund in the retirement phase and their family home, and maybe a sprinkling of small investments outside in term deposits and things like that? Well, then they're probably okay to go to their super fund and get some decent quality advice about how their fund is invested. But they also have to, if they're going to do that, learn how to identify whether they're with a good fund that's performing well for them in retirement, because their fund isn't going to tell them if they're not the best fund, they don't have an obligation to do that. But I mean, um, most funds in Australia are performing adequately well on returns and fees at the moment. Most people need to understand what's right for them and in order to do that, they need to consider whether they're going to have a simple investment in an industry fund or something to that effect, that they want to move from accumulation into the retirement phase, and then they want to rebalance those investments to be appropriate for their risk tolerance in the next phase of life. And maybe alongside that, they've got their family home, they've got a need to draw on the age pension, and they might carry some cash in a term deposit or something like that, or maybe a few investments outside, but nothing particularly complex. And if that's the case, they can probably trot off to their super fund and get some really good intra fund advice. It's called. At the moment they can only advise technically on what's in the fund and on how to get the age pension. They're very good on how to get the age pension and how to balance everything and how to make your income appropriately sort of balanced out for you and how to invest for your situation. But what they can't do is look at your investments outside or bring two people in a couple together and look at the whole picture and say, right, let's rebalance the whole thing as a household. And that's quite important because as we move into retirement, we do consider things as a household. Money starts to become combined. It's not individual anymore for the first time in most people's lives. But on the other side, a financial advisor will often approach or meet somebody for the first time in the lead up to retirement. And that person doesn't actually know the difference between investing in a profit, uh, for member fund and a platform, and all the costs involved in paying an advisor that upfront fee, paying the platform fee, paying an ongoing management fee, all of the other things that sort of get tacked in and they don't, even though we have the statement of advice process, they still get all the way down.

Phil: It just makes your, it just makes your eyes glide over the sad for.

Rebecca Wilson: The consumer because I think everybody's in it. There's advisors.

Phil: That's right. I just wanted to dwell on that, that there's two ways of doing it. Like you say, going to the super fund and getting an income stream. But then if you go and get financial advice, then you have to be in a platform. I just wanted to, you know, really strongly make these points. You have to be in a platform where your investments are, uh, you've got the ongoing fees of running that platform, the ongoing fees within the investments in that platform, and then the management fees for the financial advisor.

Rebecca Wilson: It kind of breaks my heart that the consumer doesn't get that pointed out to them until a lot later in the process. Yeah, and they don't know what's right for them. And it's actually really hard to sit back from the consumer and say, this is right for you and that's right for you. But they are going to have to get a bit of literacy in this phase in order to know because, bless. One of my best friends sat down with me the other day and she heard me talking about ETF's and equities and returns and said, oh, maybe I should move my portfolio over to an advisor and a platform. And she pulled it out and she showed it to me and she's with one of the big funds and she's getting a great return and I don't give advice, but I asked her a couple of questions. Are you getting a, ah, benchmark return of like, da da da. Yeah. Great return. Do you have any investments outside? Super. No. Are you happy? Yeah. Well, I can tell you over here, I'm paying 3% in fees. I love them. They're great. But, you know, I have to do that to get that return. And, you know, the grass isn't always. It can be green on both sides, I think is probably what I want to point out.

Phil: So people are living a lot longer these days. What sort of time period do you need to prepare for, for financially being comfortable in retirement?

Rebecca Wilson: Well, that's the first pillar of an epic retirement, right. The first pillar isn't financial confidence. It's actually time and longevity and understanding how long you're going to live. I like to give people some real numbers. I've actually had the team at Allianz Retire Plus, help me with a speech for last week that I've got some really cool, very current longevity data to share with people. So the current life expectancy data that you'll read all over the Internet says that life expectancy for a 65 year old today is 85 for men, 85.2, and 88 for women. Now, that data is not adjusted for improvements to our health and wellbeing over the period, then you would take the data that has 25 year mortality of improvements applied to it. That means it looks back over the trends over the last 25 years for how our health has improved, and it applies that forward over the next period. Those numbers say at the median, that a man today at 65, should expect to live to 88 for men, and a woman should expect to live to 90, and that one person in the couple should live to 94. But I went one further because I think it's really, really interesting to contemplate the 75th percentile or the. The one in four chance, because if you're healthier than average, if you're wealthier than average, you are likely to live longer than average, I'll be honest. And because we are working in median data points when we read these things out, and the actuaries do believe this stuff. So, you know, I take the advice from really technical experts. Now, a 65 year old today, according to the actuaries, using the 75th percentile data calculated with 25 year mortality improvements, has the chance of living to 94 for men and 95 for women and 97 for a couple.

Phil: Wow.

Rebecca Wilson: That's one in chance.

Phil: Someone who's got above average health and above average wealth.

Rebecca Wilson: Yeah. And we're not, you know, that's one in four. That's not one in ten. If there's discoveries in health in the next 25 years. Right. Which there will be, but those numbers could grow. Right. So we're looking at a very different problem to what we looked at back in 1970, when our mortality was 71 and the last ten years of our life was in poor health. We retired at 65. You know, it just a whole different definition of this phase of life. We now have 25 to 32 years in retirement by those numbers.

Phil: If we retire, we're never going to get rid of them.

Rebecca Wilson: I think we should embrace the boomer. I hate to stir the pot, but I really, really think that this is an era that is just so exciting for the world, for the people in it. Uh, we get to live longer, healthier lives than ever before. So when I say that to you, does it then not make you want to picture the life you're going to live? Okay, what do I want to do in my healthy years? Let's say. And the health span data out of the intergenerational report tells you ten to 11% of your life is spent in poor health. That hasn't changed in 50 years. That ten or 11%, what has changed is the number of years you cast it over. So we've actually added 25 years of good health to our lives, and we've added it in the middle of our lives, in our retirement, which is so cool. We didn't add it to the end. We didn't make our lives crappier and longer. You know, we actually have so many wonderful health discoveries that we then have to get on and make our lives epic. Right? This is why epic retirement, to be honest. So that leads you to the conversation about, okay, if you're going to live that long, you need to talk about the second pillar of an epic retirement, which is your financial confidence. It's not just money. You need to be confident in how you're going to use your money over the whole span of your lives and how that money will work. You need to understand it like you understood money in the first phase of your life or the second phase of your life when you bought a house and you paid down your mortgage. Well, this is a whole nother phase. The gears of money are different. And I don't believe people can operate, well, illiterate in this area of life. Or I feel sad for the people who feel like they need to bury their heads in the sand, because even if you only have a little bit of money, the systems of retirement are there to help. They're phenomenal systems in this stage of life that are designed to help people with low super balances to get possibly more than some of the self funded retirees in income per year if they use the systems. Right.

Phil: Wow. How does that work?

Rebecca Wilson: Oh, mate.

Phil: What's an example?

Rebecca Wilson: Well, there's a really cool point that anybody with an average super balance of, let's say a couple's average super balance in this country would be somewhere around about $400,000. I think the average super balance coming into retirement at the moment is somewhere around $200,000, except for women, who are obviously lower on that spectrum. But when you look at the way the age pension combines with superannuation balance of about 451,000, I think is what they call the sweet spot. That is where you achieve the maximum income from the age pension. And if you're taking the minimum drawdown from your super fund every year through the retirement phase, that amount combines to maximize your yield or income from those assets. Are, uh, those two different income sources. And somebody with an income coming from pure super needs about one to 1.2 million to match that amount of money you'd be getting from the combination of $451,000 in super as a couple. Amazing to consider, uh, the way the systems can help people. And I don't think we should be angry or sad. I can understand that the person with $1.2 million who's self funding without the support of the systems, can feel quite frustrated. And I know that they do, and.

Phil: They gotta steal their assets just as.

Rebecca Wilson: A pension, but we don't want anyone to live in poverty either. Right? And so I'm very grateful, as somebody who educates on retirement, that there are ways to use this system, because it's probably only another ten or 15 years before the age pension becomes a lesser, uh, used tool in this country, simply because we all have more super now.

Phil: It's interesting that you're talking about having a lower super balance because, you know, a lot of people who are reaching retirement age now, they only started in their super schemes sort of in the nineties, so they didn't have their whole of life to accumulate this money. So it is nice, actually, to think that there is a positive outcome for people who don't have a million bucks as they retire. They're actually as well off as someone with a million bucks. It's an amazing point to think about.

Rebecca Wilson: Look, you have to learn how to use the systems. I'm not a financial advisor, and I'm always very, very keen to point that out. Superfund financial advisors know about the sweet spot. They know how to use and leverage the age pension and your superannuation together, it's one of their key jobs, is to help you navigate the systems. But there is also a batch of financial advisors in the private client market that are well versed in this. You know, your premium advisors may not be as of with the age pension, but you know that I think it becomes something you go looking for somebody who can help you navigate it. If you're at that point, super is.

Chloe: One of the most important investments you'll ever make. But how do you know if you're in the best fund for your situation? Head to lifesherpa.com dot au to find out more. Life Sherpa, uh, Australia's most affordable online financial advice m.

Phil: Okay, so let's have a look at some of the positivities of retiring and having a healthy retirement. Do people in your experience do enough to enhance their health in retirement?

Rebecca Wilson: Well, look, you can't have an epic retirement without your health. And I think that's a very, very important thing to think about when you heading towards retirement. If your body is and your, your mind are not in the right shape, then you're not going to have the right attitude to getting the most out of life. Right. And you're going to look at life differently. But the science of modern aging is telling us that it's not too late, that we can turn around our physicality, we can make our health a significant priority. And if you get a plan for a long life and you're going to have your money sorted out to stretch across your life, well, personally, I think an hour in the gym or on the walking out there, walking every day is not a poor investment. Right. So looking after our health becomes a really important priority. There's a couple of things I like people to think about. Doing 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise per week is really the WHO guideline. Two muscle mass sessions is which I don't believe people do enough of, muscle mass exercise.

Phil: That's weight, weights, isn't it? In the gym, yeah, weights. I'm a big believer in that. I've gone there all my life.

Rebecca Wilson: Oh, uh, it's an amazing thing, right?

Phil: I haven't turned into a muscle mary.

Rebecca Wilson: Obviously, but it's muscle mass, uh, is the key, I think, to a lot of the science of modern aging and good health. We see that, you know, people focus a lot on weight in the first half of life, and weight is important. But what's more important in this phase of your life is the fat around your belly and the visceral fat. You're carrying. And you're better off working on your body constitution. What is it made of? Is it made of muscle mass or is it made of fat? Can we move the needle on the muscle mass? Because that moves the needle on the metabolics, it moves the needle on the insulin management, it moves the needle on heart health. There's just so much to be gained. And the other thing everybody over 60 should know is about balance exercise, because the who really does point out that they need three balance exercises a week to stem the risk of falls, which, even though you think you're young, fit and healthy, becomes one of the more significant risks as you get older.

Phil: Yeah. Especially if you're cycling or doing something exciting like that as well. You're going to have falls in those.

Rebecca Wilson: And you want to be in good condition for those. In her early seventies now. And it's amazing how once you start falling, if your ankle strength is not where it could be, those falls can be quite debilitating over time.

Phil: Disastrous. Yeah.

Rebecca Wilson: Once you head down that path, you know, you lose your confidence, you lose your mobility, and all of it goes together. And you don't want to lose any one of those things is the thing. You all think you're young and invincible at 65, and you are, as long as you look after your health.

Phil: So it's not as simple as achieving happiness and fulfillment like in those retirement brochures. And they've always got those older people running down the beach in white linen. Yeah, tell us about.

Rebecca Wilson: I was going to say exactly.

Phil: It, uh, signifies happiness and fulfillment. Those white linen pants, don't they?

Rebecca Wilson: Oh, they do. Don't you all want to have to iron white linen pants every morning for your retirement? I mean. Oh, God, I can't think of anything.

Phil: I can't clean them as well.

Rebecca Wilson: Yeah, no, I'm in denim every day. But let's talk about happiness and fulfillment, because they're two different things. There's happiness and there's fulfillment, and I think we need to break them up and make people understand that they have to go looking for each. Happiness is found in two different ways. There's hedonic happiness, the type of happiness that comes from hedonism. And that type of happiness is looking for small joys, little joys. You know, it's in the moment, it's very much chasing out little moments of delight. I started a rose garden in Covid. I was running a travel company, and I couldn't get moments of delight at work because it was pretty traumatizing. So I went and looked for ways to have hedonism. I was writing this book at the time, and I felt it was very important to learn more about myself and where I felt joy and to find ways to include. It could be taking your grandchild for ice cream. It could be just sitting with them and listening to the babble and interacting with the babble and not looking at your phone and not thinking about what's coming next in the day, and not worrying about the traffic home. Just being in that moment. Right. And setting your life up to have more of those little joys that gets you a short term hit. It doesn't work long term.

Fulfillment comes from two different things called eudaimonic happiness

So we then need to talk about how you find fulfillment. Fulfillment is something we have to go looking for, and it comes from two different things that are both together called eudaimonic happiness. Eudaimonic happiness is something that's been studied by happiness experts over the last 20 years. It's all quite new science, but it is science, right? And they are pointing to two things, using your skills and the natural capabilities that make you feel purposeful. And for many people, this is why they do. My course is to really dig into both the finances and to really dig into what drives their sense of purpose. And then there is the higher sense of meaning. So finding things that matter, uh, that aren't just yourself, moving yourself beyond the selfish to say what really means something to me in the world, is it, you know, nature? Is it, you know, standing up for a cause? Is it being part of a charitable group? It doesn't matter what it is, so long as you believe in it. And then you get out of bed every day to be purposeful in those activities, and it makes you feel like you're part of something bigger than you. And then really going and scouring. I have a process I teach people for scouring through themselves first for what those things are, and then to go and look in the outside world for how to fill up their lives with purposeful activity. The combination of which of these two things are actually really important, that hedonic happiness and the eudaimonic happiness.

Phil: Are, uh, women better than men at this process?

Rebecca Wilson: I perceive so. But women increasingly have had very intense careers as well. So whilst they may be better at the social stuff, they may still struggle with the re identification beyond work with.

Phil: Because it is so many people. Yeah. People's identity is so driven by work these days, isn't it? And then when you suddenly you haven't got that important role or you haven't got that office, and you haven't got influence, some people are just all at sea, aren't they? Yeah.

Rebecca Wilson: And I think the older generations, the Gen X and the Boomer, are actually quite unique. The younger generations like to do three different things. They have little portfolio lives going on. They need to have them to pay their mortgages, to be honest. They juggle a few different jobs. If one drops away, they lean into another. But Gen X and boomers have been, I guess, built in an era of loyalty with long term commitments. And then they've gone through this family phase of life where they've really been focused on that family as their portfolio. And then the family ups and flies away and they hit this phase of life where they haven't put themselves first for a long time. They have to relearn how to do that, and they have to do it not with the lens that they're getting old anymore. Previously we hit this stage of life, and it was just before the stage of life we got old, so we didn't need to rebuild ourselves. We just anchored into our families. Now you got to rebuild. You got to go and find the stuff that's going to give you 30 years of joy.

Phil: What about travel then? Is that part of the joyful experience?

Rebecca Wilson: Well, I think a lot of people want to travel. When I speak in libraries and events, I ask people, how many of you want to travel? And every hand in the room shoots up. When I ask them how many want to manage their finances, there isn't as many hands. So I think having run a travel company for over six years, for six years, the things people want to do in this phase start out quite adventurous. And people need to learn how the systems of travel work. Again, I'm all about the systems. If you learn how the systems work for you, you can make more holidays a year for less money, if that's your priority. Not everybody wants cheap holidays. Plenty of people just want to stay on a, uh, six star wheel of beautiful holidays as well. And you can then also identify the holidays you want to do while you're fit, healthy and full. And then you can actually pace your holidays around when you might not be able to get insurance later in life, maybe in your eighties, and know that, hey, you'll do some local travel then. If travel's on, your gender is a high priority.

Phil: Yeah, I've just noticed that recently some older friends of mine who have hit 80 and they can't actually travel anymore just because of the cost of the insurance.

Rebecca Wilson: Um, or if one of you has a health problem.

Phil: Or if one has a health problem. Yeah.

Rebecca Wilson: And the insurance spikes out. And so what people should know, and again, this is all in my book and all in my course. Ah. In much greater detail, is how the systems work and where the limitations are pressed upon you to slow down, um, your ability to do things so that you can organize your life to get the most out of it.

Phil: Yeah, it's funny, I'm just reflecting. I've got a few friends who are retiring or on the point of retiring, and the different ways they're handling it. You know, like, I've got a couple of friends, she's traveling, and he's staying at home with the dogs. You know, they're both happier, uh, in that way. Then I've got another. No, no, that's right. And this is the thing. Yeah. You don't have to do the same, you don't have to do the same thing as a, each other.

Rebecca Wilson: Yeah. 25% of people say they want to travel solo these days, and that doesn't mean they're single. My lady next door, her husband is 15 years older than her. She's just sent him off on a walking tour to England, and she's staying home to look after their teenage daughter and make sure the school run still gets done. And you, uh, know, she's like, I'm going to have a lovely time without him. It's going to be great. He's going to have a lovely time without me. My dad and my stepmom, they travel. My dad likes to hire and trek up and downstairs. My stepmom doesn't. So she finds nice hotels that, you know, will drive her from a to b, and she'll meet him at the next point.

Phil: It's a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Rebecca Wilson: Yeah. I think finding your own individuality in travel is very, very important.

Phil: Yeah. And it's also. But then I've got another friend, and as he's kind of transitioning, he's not retiring yet, but he's doing more and more charity work and just really loving doing the charity work, joining a choir. So he's, you know, out there singing.

Rebecca Wilson: At all of their citizenship, happiness from the choir.

Phil: That's right.

Rebecca Wilson: Higher sense of purpose from the charity work. He will be a happy man.

Phil: Well, he's always been accused of toxic, uh, positivity.

Rebecca Wilson: That's what he's, can I meet him? Yeah.

Phil: He's a lovely guy. My oldest, dearest friend. We've known each other since we were eight years old.

Rebecca Wilson: It's tough, isn't it? And the only thing you can do to help those people is to kind of point them in the direction of these little processes that I use, which are, uh, to sit down and look at those skills, to sit down and evaluate what skills put you in the zone. How can you get the use of some of those skills into your life? How can you find a higher sense of meaning from one activity in your life, even to look at your number of. And I teach about a concept called epic pursuits, which is kind of like hobbies on steroids. If you're not investing in yourself to learn new things, I think, you know, you're wasting a little bit of your opportunity to be passionate. And I don't want people to waste their opportunity to be passionate. You don't have to stop being passionate at 60. We all need to keep learning, to keep active, to keep fulfilled. So what are you going to learn about? It could be model trains like, uh, Spencer House and who I interview on my podcast and grubby down in Melbourne, two radio presenters that come on and chat regularly. It could be as your friend is investing in going on choir shows around the country, right? It could be, you know, finding things that you can keep investing in the passion of rather than just turning up to. I'm a little bit of. It's not an epic pursuit unless you're investing in your skills and knowledge.

Phil: I'm looking forward to it.

Rebecca Wilson: So I'm teaching people, because you can see the lights in their eyes come on and go, oh, that's so logical, Bec. And it's not foreign information, it's just that we get out of the practice, right? And if we fall into this sort of hierarchical society, which we climb up for so long and we don't step off the path, it's very uncomfortable to step off the path in the working years, right? If we're pushed out of the workforce or we jump into a different lane, it can feel very, very uncomfortable for people. This is when you step out. But I want people to be prepared. I want them m to know what to expect in the feelings. There's a whole transition process that you can expect a series of feelings to come through your life and you can sort of almost meter where you are on the journey by monitoring where those feelings are.

Phil: And, uh, you can always work well.

Rebecca Wilson: And you can always go back.

Phil: There is a cohort of people who just keep working, you know, and, uh, who enjoy their work. I mean, I'm getting a bit on, a bit. Like I said, I've got friends who are retiring and I'm busier now than I've ever been in my working life and enjoying it.

Rebecca Wilson: I mean, I personally, we did a survey recently, again with Allianz retire plus of our members that I've been talking about in the industry around the country, and the data said that 40% of people, 38% of people want to go back to work after they retire, but they don't have any plans to yet. And another 40% of people want to go back to work after they retire. And they do have plans. Right? So the concept of retirement is just a technical line in access to the superannuation fund now and then. It's another language we speak at the end when we stop doing everything.

Phil: It's not a hard cutoff, is it? You can just say, I'm retired, m and m. Then you go back to.

Rebecca Wilson: Leading the language retirement slowly, really slowly. From what I do, I'm calling it our prime time, and this is our best years. Learn how to use your money, learn how to use your life, learn how to do the things you want to do, and learn how the systems help you to make choice in your life. Because if you don't learn, you can't ever really stop until you become fully able to become passive. And maybe you could hybrid so quickly.

Phil: We'll just cover your home as you age.

Rebecca Wilson: Oh, yes, the last one, the toughest one. And this is coming about as a generation where we are going to live longer. We're going to live ten years in poor health, or not poor health, but declining health, possibly, unless we're the magically fit people that make it all the way to the end and have a one year downhill climb. But in all reality, we all should plan for how we're going to age in place and how we're going to live and what homes we want to live in. Now, from midlife, we'll move through a couple of houses. We might move from our family home to our lifestyle home, or we might even jump all the way down to a low maintenance home. That concept is something that you lose $100,000, the current housing values. Every time you do it, a little piece of your soul is you have to downsize as well. So I would discourage people from doing that without the awareness of how much it's costing them and to know that they probably want to end up in a low maintenance, age friendly house by the time they're 70 or 75. Because after that, you want to be able to access care in your home whenever you need to. Right. And that becomes really important to contemplate how you access care in your home, because you don't really want to end up in aged care if you can avoid it. There's only 220,000 aged care beds in Australia, and you only want to get there if you have suffered dementia. Otherwise, try and look at the different types of community housing. We also have a high propensity to lose a partner in our seventies and eighties. So being conscious of whether we'd be able or interested to contemplate a retirement community, at what stage of our life it's right, whether it's in declining health or whether you want to do it for a lifestyle choice, because there's two different types of communities, lifestyle communities and retirement communities, which are really more about health and aging and just making choices consciously through here rather than kind of urgently. Because if you want to age elegantly, you know, being able to make sure you can access care, I think, is important. And you don't have to move at a point when you and your life that will be really disruptive in your eighties or something.

Phil: So, bec, tell us all about Beckworld and how can listeners find out more about you and your work?

Rebecca Wilson: Oh, uh, bless you. The best way to find a lot of what I do is to just visit my website@epicretirement.com, dot au dot. On there, you'll be directed out to all the little websites. I have a newsletter that goes out every week@epicretirement.net, comma, which is my primary channel of communication. And then there's a podcast that goes out with the Nine Network. It's quite a lot of fun. It's for the whole second half of life, and that's called prime time with Beck Wilson. And you can access, uh, our, uh, podcast newsletter@primetimers.net, dot. You'll see me in the newspaper, uh, if you read the nine newspapers every weekend, in print on Sundays, and in digital all weekend. And, yeah, I also run an education program. I forgot, nearly forgot about that. A six week get ready for retirement program. So that's, we're kicking off our second program this week. It's phenomenal. We've got hundreds of people doing it together. Uh, we have eight and a half hours of online education content, six live events with gurus from all over the industry where we have live Q and A's, and you can ask questions of all these really important people in funds and super and retirement products to really learn from each other. We have a chat room. It's just this really interactive way of learning so that you have a better understanding as you come in. And you're more literate about the things that are going to happen. And that's really all my goal in life is to keep going. And then, of course, the book, which is a bestseller and is available in many, many bookstores, and Amazon and booktopia, of course, are probably your best source because they just keep ordering. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

Phil: Remind us of the name of the book.

Rebecca Wilson: Again, the book is called how to have an epic retirement.

Phil: Fantastic. Bec Wilson, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a great pleasure meeting you at the conference and hearing this, uh, podcast interview.

Rebecca Wilson: Thank you for having me, Phil. It's been a delight.

Chloe: Thanks for listening to shares for beginners. You can find more@sharesforbeginners.com if you enjoy listening, please take a moment to rate a review in your podcast player or tell a friend who might want to learn more about investing for their future.

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