Ready For Retirement
Ready For Retirement
The Unexpected Exit at 55 — Finding Freedom, Purpose, and Identity
In this episode of Retirement Reality, meet Donovan, a 55-year-old retiree who turned an unexpected career exit into an opportunity for freedom, reflection, and new purpose. Donovan shares how one defining word, choice, shaped his journey before, during, and after retirement.
From years of disciplined saving and intentional living to facing an unplanned exit from corporate life, Donovan opens up about how preparation, mindset, and adaptability transformed what could have been a setback into a second act filled with meaning. He and James discuss the emotional and psychological sides of retirement: identity shifts, finding purpose, redefining relationships, and learning to spend after decades of saving.
This conversation dives into the real retirement journey: the freedom it brings, the fears it stirs, and the wisdom that comes from embracing both. Whether you're approaching retirement or simply rethinking your next chapter, Donovan’s story will challenge you to see this season as an opportunity — not an ending.
Key Themes:
The power of choice in financial and life planning
Transitioning from career identity to personal purpose
Managing the emotional and psychological side of retirement
Finding meaning, health, and community in life after work
Overcoming the fear of spending after years of saving
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Donovan is not a client of Root Financial Partners, LLC and received no compensation for participating in this video. His statements reflect his own opinions and experience and are not indicative of any specific client’s experience and are not a guarantee of results. No cash or non-cash compensation was provided, and no material conflicts are known.
Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.
The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.
Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements
Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.
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Do you struggle with that at all when the last position was eliminated? I know you're still working, you're still you still have a position, but was there any struggle with feeling like you lost a piece of your identity?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I and and it's absolutely natural to go through. And even though I knew it was going to happen, when it does happen and you no longer get those those calls or those invitations, all of that goes away. If that was your sole identity and you had no other inputs and way to feel good about yourself, I can imagine that somebody like that would struggle.
SPEAKER_00:When Donovan came back from vacation and realized that his role was eliminated, he was financially ready, but the real work was psychological. Identity, purpose, and learning how to spend after a lifetime of saving were the real challenges that Donovan faced. In today's episode, we break down the four core buckets of retirement and we learn how to test retirement before you dive right in. If you're on the edge of retiring but fear what's next, stay tuned. This episode is for you. Hi, Donovan. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Retirement Reality. I'm curious, if you could choose one word to describe your retirement so far, what would that word be?
SPEAKER_01:Choice. Choice would be the defining element for my retirement journey. It was the ability to make the choice at the time. And the choices that I made earlier on in my career and in my life plan, my financial plan, helped me be able to make that choice when the time came.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. I'm going to come right back to that. Before I do, how long have you been retired at this point?
SPEAKER_01:I guess technically it would just be a little bit over a year. And I kind of call it semi-retired because I'm not fully removed from the professional life that I used to have. I still do a little bit of consulting, both individual private coaching and then business consulting, and some instructional work through one of our post-secondary institutions on management and leadership and business. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that right there, retirement has different meanings for different people. And retirement is not true retirement in the purest sense of the word as we're talking about it. But going back to choice, as you mentioned, can you tell me more about that or maybe even just your journey leading up to retirement and how choice became the word that you would use to define that journey?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it all everything comes down to the choices that you make in life. If you choose to have a certain job versus another, and that was one of the earliest choices that I had to make. Was I going to work at Xerox, a big corporate conglomerate, or was I going to go with a smaller private company? Throughout life, you have to make choices. One of the most significant, both from a financial perspective and a life perspective, is who do you choose to marry? That can have a huge impact. Then choices about your finances. Do you choose to save your money or spend your money? Do you choose to buy a bigger house or a vacation property? Do you choose a vacation property or multiple vacations? Do you choose multiple vacations or a bigger car? Or do you choose a bigger car or home renovations? It's all about choice. Those choices have consequences. So you have to understand the implication of the choices that you make. And for myself, I made certain good choices throughout my life that helped me prepare. And by no means was I, you know, winning the lottery or getting an inheritance from anybody. It was just choices to continually save a little bit at a time, always with that goal of being able to provide myself the choice when I thought it might happen. And sure enough, it did. And I was able to make the choice to retire or at least try retirement for a bit.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. And that choice piece, how do you what would you, I guess I should say, define as some of those key choices that you made along the way that prepared you for where you are right now?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I know that most of the viewers are concerned around the financial side. So the choice to start saving early, absolutely fundamental. And I was very much an early saver in my life. But even once you start your professional career, just saving a little bit and having gone through university and getting a finance degree, never using it actually in my professional life, other than because of the roles that I had. But I was aware of the time value of money and the importance of compounding. So by putting away a little bit at a time each and every month, each and every year, and continually doing that, especially early on, and leaving it there so that it could compound has an astronomical effect that I don't think most people fully comprehend and sometimes miss out on if they don't start saving until they're in their 30s or 40s or heaven forbid your 50s. That becomes very, very difficult. So from a financial perspective, that would have been one of the biggest choices to make. And along with that, it would be living within your means, right? In order to save a little, you have to live within your means. You can't spend every dime that you have or every dime that you might have in the future on stuff today if you're thinking about what you want your life to be like tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. I'm going to come back to that in a little bit because there's a couple more questions I have with that. But you have been retired for one year now, is that correct? Semi-retired for one year now. I know you're still teaching. Yeah, just a little bit over a year. Yeah. Will you walk us through that transition of a year ago? Where were you? What was your position? And how does that differ from what you're doing today?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I'll actually go back even a little bit before uh the the event, before my exit. Um I had been thinking about what a retirement might be like and just mentally trying to understand what any kind of a transition would be. Would it be full stop? And I knew that at that point in my life, I was 55 at the time, that a full stop was probably not going to be for me. I've I've always had fairly intense jobs that require more than your standard work week uh and a lot of uh emotional and physical investment in time. So I knew I was probably going to do something. What was that going to be? I didn't know. So I started exploring some alternatives. One of them happened to be uh an instructor type role because we were putting our uh leadership and management teams through a management course. And I got exposed to one of the instructors. And during that course, I asked them the question. I said, this is a pretty cool job. I would I'd be interested in doing this. How would I potentially even get connected or linked in to this? And she introduced me to the recruiting uh coordinator. We had a couple of discussions, um, sounded interesting. I wasn't ready yet because I had a full-time job. Then I went on vacation to Europe with the family, came back, and on that Monday, when I was coming back to work, I was fully prepared to come in and start talking about the next quarter and our plans and what we're going to do and how I might be able to leverage this instructional element to help our business. And it was at that point on the Monday morning I was exited. So it was like, wow, okay. Well, now I have a whole bunch of choices I can make. Uh, do I choose to go pursue another job? Do I choose to sign on with this institution and do some teaching and coaching? So I I had been thinking about it prior to that. And this was an ideal opportunity. I was at a financial point in my life where I could make that choice. And so I thought, well, when when am I ever going to have this opportunity again? So I agreed to sign on with the with the education institution and start the instruction training and get certified to do all the things I needed to do there. That took way longer than I thought. That was like a six, seven-month journey. Academia is very different than the corporate world. But uh through that time, it gave me the opportunity to just reflect on what I wanted, what was important, and really kind of experience that retirement phase while still having a toe in for what might be a potential future career, or as I call it, an encore career. And I made the decision to sign on, and then I started doing a little bit of consulting on the side, probably the total equivalent of a day, a week, uh, you know, three, four, five days a month kind of a thing. So it really was almost all retirement versus, you know, any kind of a regular part-time or consulting type job. And now uh I'm at that point where I'm trying to, again, make the decision or the choice, how much more do I want to do? Because there's still there's still lots in the tank yet. Uh and I believe I have that opportunity to now to give back to some of the future leaders. So that's where my focus is is how many people can I help become that next generation of leader and share some of my own experiences. So whether that's through individual consulting, through the teaching aspect, or potentially public speaking, I'm going to be I'm going to be evaluating those different choices that I can make.
SPEAKER_00:That theme is showing up again and again, that that choice. I had a similar experience before starting Root Financial of being exited from a prior company. And in retrospect, one of the best things that ever happened. What you mentioned, that chance to step back and reflect on what choice do I want to make going forward and what's going to be best for uh the long term, invaluable in retrospect. But no, for me at least, it was a very scary time. It was a different phase of my life, but very scary time because that wasn't the choice I had intentionally made at the time it was made for me. It wasn't the path I saw for myself. It was completely different. How did that feel? So that Monday morning, you come back, you're back from vacation, you've got plans of what's going to happen. How how did you do during that when you received that news?
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I've been through this before. It's just the nature of the career that I've had. Um, and it was actually one of the things we have a we had a whiteboard in the office where we would write down quotes, inspirational quotes, and some funny, silly quotes. And one of the things I wrote on that board was uh change is inevitable and it's constant. Sometimes you choose the change, and sometimes change is chosen for you or thrust upon you. We all have then the choice of how we're going to deal with that change. So when I was exited on that Monday morning, I have the choice of how I'm going to react. Uh I chose to look at it as an opportunity because I had been through this before. So I knew that I was financially okay. That was not going to be a problem. It's not like I got a great big, you know, golden handshake exit package or anything like that. That's absolutely not the case. So everything was going to be incumbent on me, having managed my finances in the past, to be able to support our future. But because I had contacts in the industry, because I had previously done some thinking about this, I was mentally and emotionally in a better place than I would have been if I had not given it any thought whatsoever and was simply hit in the face with the exit brick. Um and that does happen to people. And I've been on both sides of that equation where I've had to give other people the news. And it's never easy. And you always try to empathize with the person and what they're feeling. Uh, in some of the bigger organizations I was with, we had transition coordinators and and we had supports for them. Uh within this smaller company I was previously at, there's there's none of that. So you're you're on your own. But knowing that I had been through this before and you come out okay, you have that experience. So for me, it was just a choice of now what do I want to do? Do I want all of this free time on my own or do I want to continue working? And if I continue work, in what capacity and for what purpose? And for me now, it's all about doing the things that I enjoy doing the most and focusing on those and the impact I can have on others to help make them better. Because my my career runway is very, very short at this particular point in time. But some of the people that I now get the opportunity to work with, they're just beginning. They're in their early 20s, they're wide-eyed, they're excited, they're in their 30s, they're just you know exploring the middle management roles. Or some of them are at that point in their career where they're making big investments in small businesses and they want that experience about how do you navigate this whole startup world. And I'm excited about being able to help on that, on that end of it, but not full time. I'm probably gonna do that, you know, a day or two, three days a week kind of a thing. It it depends on the engagement. If it interests me and excites me, then I'll choose to do it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So there was a level when this, when you were exited, it was not you being caught flat-footed of, oh my goodness, what the heck is next? It sounds like there had been some level of intention of what do I want my future to look like? What is next for me, regardless of that happening? How much of life right now looks like what you thought it might look like a couple years ago, not necessarily the time frame, but what you thought you'd be doing after that position?
SPEAKER_01:Remarkably, it's it's quite similar to what I had envisioned. Um a little bit different, like like the instructional piece is taking longer to get going to the degree that I thought it would. But that's simply my not knowing uh the world of academia and how long it takes to go through certain certifications and programs uh that they have. Uh but the rest of life has pretty much laid out the way that I had anticipated, in part because I had a lot of opportunity to discuss it with friends who've been through it before. And that's that's one of the recommendations I make to anybody thinking about this is to speak with others who are either at a similar position to you or are slightly ahead of you in that life uh plan, that life path, and see what they went through. Um, one of the questions I used to ask a couple of my golf buddies and a few others is what would you tell your five-year or 10-year younger self? What advice would you give you? And if there's anything, what would you change uh so that you could tell your five-year, 10-year younger self to go and do this better? And their insights were very helpful. So that helped me mentally prepare uh and get ready, just in case, because you know, you you never know what's gonna happen in life. So what were those insights, Donovan? There were probably three real big ones. Uh, one that I remember very well was around health. Um, a number of people that I spoke to mentioned that they would have taken better care of their bodies because at 60, 65, things just, you know, they start, they start breaking down a lot faster and it takes longer to recover uh than it ever did before. So that's one thing I've always been healthy, I've always exercised. So I I thought I kind of had that one covered off, um, but someone gave me some advice. They said, you like to do these Spartan races and things like that. Maybe you want to dial that back because the last thing you want to do is have something really get hurt, and then you can't do all the things that you love. And I was like, huh. You know what? That's that's not a that's not a bad piece of advice. I don't need to, you know, do 300 pounds on the squat rack. You know what? Dialing that back and taking it easy and respecting the body is important. So so health was number one. Uh the second one was around uh your friendship circle, your your relationships. And and there's kind of four buckets that I always think of. It's finances, health, relationships, and purpose. So those four buckets were things that I contemplated. And the purpose one was something that was told to me by uh it was a guy that I was golfing with at the time, just happened to pair up. He's 80 years old or 80, 84 years old. Still golfing, still walking, pulling his cart. And so he's obviously in good healthy uh state. But my question to him was, what would you tell yourself differently? And he goes, make sure that you're retiring to something, that you have something in mind as to what you want to do, whether it's a hobby or part-time volunteering or part-time work, whatever it is. Have a purpose. And for me, that's why I was always looking ahead as to, okay, well, what would I do if? And luckily, I had I had a few options as to what to do if and when something happened, because when it did, then I was able to make that choice a little bit easier.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, when I speak with people like you, Donovan, who strike me as very driven, very intentional what you're doing. You start saving early, investing early, you do well in your career, you have high-level positions. Not always, but for a lot of those types of people, that work becomes a big part of purpose or a big part of identity. Absolutely. You struggle with that at all when the last position was eliminated. I know you're still working, you're still have a position, but was there any struggle with feeling like you lost a piece of your identity?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I and it's absolutely natural to go through. And even though I knew it was going to happen, when it does happen and you no longer get those calls or those invitations, um, you know, throughout the last 20 years of my working career, I've been at a position of leadership and people look to you for either guidance, um, decision making, uh, whether it's clients, internal people, partners. And when you no longer are working in that kind of a role, all of that goes away. So if that was your sole identity and you had no other inputs and way to feel good about yourself, I can imagine that somebody like that would struggle. And I assume that that's why a lot of people stick in their jobs until they're 65, 70, and sometimes even beyond. Entrepreneurs, you know, they'll say because they don't know anything else. This is all that they've done in their life, and their entire identity is wrapped up in that. Um I've been through a number of different organizations. So for me, my identity was never about a particular job. It was about the role that I played in that job and the influence I had on other people. But when that goes away, uh yeah, you you at some point in time you're going to, you're gonna miss it. Your ego takes a hit. And I had a friend who was the president of a uh of a fairly large company. And when he stepped away from that role, uh, it was something that he struggled with. It was something that he mentioned that, you know, he's not done. He needs to do one more thing, what just one more thing. And I suppose that that's a natural reaction. It's then a question of how do you how do you find that next purpose that's going to give you that both emotional and let's be honest, a little bit of an ego pat on the back for, hey, yeah, you're still valuable.
SPEAKER_00:You're you still matter to people. How have you filled that? I know you're teaching now. I know you're still doing things, even looking at on LinkedIn. There's a lot that you're doing, just coaching the world, so to speak, not even just one-on-one. Yeah. What have you done to fill that purpose piece?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it it does change. So again, it's not now specifically, you know, 10 people in a company or 20 people in a company or 100 people in a company. It's the ability now to have a voice to a broader community of people. Um, if you were a financial planner or are a financial planner and you're working with 100 clients or 200 clients, that's your your focus. But through the power of the web and YouTube, you can now have influence and impact on maybe a thousand people or 10,000 people at a time. So for me, uh finding that new voice and being able to say, okay, well, this is still valuable. I can still have an opinion on things, I can still provide perspective and insights and guidance, but I'm going to do that now in a different way. So I may do it through a little bit of instruction, through some coaching and some business consulting. Uh, maybe in the future I'll do it through some uh professional public speaking. We'll we'll see where that leads. Uh, but again, it's all about finding finding that next purpose in your life and not letting the previous job define you because those those those can be taken away from you at any point in time, whether it's your choice, somebody else's choice, a choice of health, economics, uh you really don't have control over all of those situations.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yes, it's very much fleeting. Um, so I I imagine, Donovan, in your experience, you've had different positions, you've gone through different transitions, you've gone through scary things and come out the other side, you've done hard things and come out the other side. Sometimes things that are hard for people, I could sit here and say, Donovan, make this decision. I can see it objectively because I'm not you. I'm not emotionally invested. You can do the same thing. I'm sure there's plenty of people you've worked with or coached or seen where you're saying, I've gone through this transition, I've been through it before, I've done these things. Are there people you can think of without naming names, but are there people that you can think of that are stuck in this hamster wheel of I can't step away from work because I'll lose my purpose, or I can't step away because I don't know how to make the next choice. Is there someone you can think of and you could what's holding them back, if so?
SPEAKER_01:For each individual, I'm sure it's a little bit personal, and and sometimes people may not even know. They just fear is one of the biggest things. Uh fear of the unknown is is one of the biggest fears that people can have, next to public speaking. Um the fear of will I have enough, enough money, um, enough to do to fill my time. And there are a few people that I know that uh for them, um that's probably a significant fear or or apprehension, uh barrier, challenge, whatever you want to call it. Uh how they deal with it and how they overcome it, sometimes you just have to take the leap. And and it's one of the things that that that I've talked about in the past when doing some coaching is you sometimes you just have to take a shot. And for me, when when it happened, when when the exit happened with me, I had to do that self-reflection and go, okay, if I'm going to do this, let's give it a try. Let let's let's try. Let's give it a shot. For those other people, they they may need much more reassurance or guidance through that. And whether that's uh maybe a one-on-one conversations with friends, or maybe it's a little bit more reassurance from their financial planner that, yeah, you're gonna be okay. Um, I had to do that myself. I had to go and make sure and run the numbers 10 different ways to make sure that we were going to be okay if we did it this way. It's like, okay, once once that little check box is covered, then then the other questions start to come into play. Not that the finance piece ever goes away, but um the other ones become what you then turn to if the finance piece is got a check mark beside it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What do those financial concerns feel like? So you've checked the boxes, you run the numbers. You mentioned before, do you started early, you saved, I'm sure you were well positioned financially to do so. Do those financial fears ever subside, or is there always a little bit of that that goes back?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I hope they subside because I still have them, um, even though I've run the numbers, and my financial planner has run the numbers, and I've used tools like Honest Math to run the numbers. I've got in my own spreadsheet, like it's it's huge, and I've got multiple scenarios in there. Spending this much more, that much more over this period of time. And I still have a really hard time. One of the hardest things is starting to pull money out when all you've ever done your entire life is put money in to save money. I've been saving money for this since I was 12. I've been calculating compound interest on GICs when I was 12. How much am I going to have here, here, and here, be able to buy a house, then the house goes. And now I still have a trouble being comfortable to be pulling money out. So I've I've had to kick myself in the butt a little bit and start withdrawing a little bit. Even though I may not necessarily need it, I'm trying to condition myself to the fact that the number in the bank account might start to go down a little bit just to get used to it. And again, it's it's a very safe amount, but it's something. And I I expect that as I get used to it, that number will increase as maybe my desire to um, you know, coach and teach you know becomes less in five years or ten years or whatever it is. It'll have to be, yeah. But then I'll at least be comfortable pulling more out over time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I like the way that you framed that. Of you're you're approaching it like it's a new skill that you're learning because it is a new skill that you're learning, and you're starting small and then you're gonna ramp up from there. Any feedback that you would offer to people who are in that same struggle or that same mindset, or do you feel like you're still figuring it out too, of just trying to learn it?
SPEAKER_01:I I I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what the right number is. And I'm very conservative by nature. So as I've done the planning, I'm looking at these first couple of years as a test, right? Um, okay, well, if I do X and pull out Y, where do I end up at the end of the year? Am I, you know, a little bit equal or a little bit ahead of where I thought I might be or where my financial planner thought I might be? And so far, so good. So year one, check, we're safe, it's good. You know, the markets have success, you know, uh luckily done quite well this year, so so that helps. Uh, year two, you know, will be different than year one. Uh, we have some, you know, some home renovations and some plans to to upgrade some things. Uh, that's just life. And now without a big paycheck coming in on a regular basis, you have to pull that from retirement savings. And it's like, oh my goodness, like I'm gonna pull$10,000 to go fix the roof and the driveway. That's what I had to do this year. Uh wow, that hurts because I can't just pay that off like I normally would have. Okay. Well, we'll get used to that, but we won't do it all at once. And then next year we'll do the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing. So just little bit by little bit.
SPEAKER_00:I would imagine that as you projected this out, you're making projections based on an assumed spending rate of what are we going to be spending? Do we have enough on our portfolio to support that? Relative to what you thought spending might look like, has it been pretty close? Have you spent more? Has it been less?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for me, because I had been doing a budget and revising that budget on you know, fixed versus variable costs, you know, wants, like a like a big vacation versus needs, paying the mortgage, paying, you know, utilities and all that kind of stuff, my budget was fairly close. So uh in retirement, I'm quite close to what I had estimated from a budgeting perspective, with a little bit of wiggle room. And with that little bit of wiggle room, I'm using that for some of those special house projects. I would expect that if things go the way that I plan, I probably won't be spending as much as I was when I was fully working, because I, you know, we may not need uh, you know, two vehicles. If if there's two of us in the household and we have two vehicles and we really don't drive that many places anymore. If I'm not driving to work all the time, then maybe one of those goes away. So that expense might reduce. We've already been on a number of vacations in our lives. So uh that vacation budget isn't quite the same. And our our daughter who's in university, that cost will go away in a few years. So all of that will will adjust over time. Um I'm hoping to have more wiggle room. I I like, I'm just again, I'm conservative. I like to have more wiggle room than than just being right tight to the budget. Spend within your means. That was always the model. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Very good. I'm gonna um pivot a little bit or switch gears a little bit. Uh, a lot of people on this show, as we've asked, just what's it been like? You know, I was sharing with you before we started recording that the journey to retirement so often starts with understanding, well, what's my number? How much do I need to save? Where do I need to save? How much can I pull out? And then people either get close to achieving that or they achieve that and realize, oh, there's a completely different side of this, the psychological side, the emotional side. And sometimes when people aren't prepared for that, people have shared challenges with depression, people have shared challenges with loneliness, people have shared challenges with all kinds of things they just weren't prepared for. Have you have there been any unexpected challenges that you faced either on the journey to retirement or even in quote-unquote partial retirement?
SPEAKER_01:Unexpected or expected. Yeah, I mean, the the expected ones were the difficulty around, you know, going from a saver to a spender. The expected difficulty was around that, you know, that lack of purpose and structure and rigor in a particular day, and the the little bit of an you know pat on the back that comes with um people saying, thank you for your help on this or that or whatever it is in the work world. So that gap was expected, yet at the same time, you know, uh dealing with it mentally and going, okay, you're you're not the guy anymore. No, nobody, nobody cares. What do you think? Your opinion doesn't matter because you're not part of the company anymore. You don't get the invites to you know whatever social event or sporting event. I I don't get any hockey invites anymore, I don't get any of the golf invites that I used to. So those are expected, yet they still have they still have an impact on you emotionally. So those four buckets that I talked about, the financial bucket, the health bucket, the relationship bucket, and the purpose, there's different experiences that go with each of those. And if you want to add a fifth bucket to it, it's it's your own personal emotional bucket. How are you going to be able to deal with these things? And that's that's often hard for a lot of people who haven't gone through certain life-changing experiences in the past or have done that really deep self-analysis to go, who am I and what am I, and why do I do certain things and why are they important to me? Um, when you're retired, if you have a whole bunch of time, some of those thoughts may start creeping in, and maybe you don't like what comes out of that in your head. So having that relationship uh bucket filled with family and friends, and good friends that you can have some honest conversations with, I think that's critically important. It doesn't have to be a hundred people, but you need to have one or two people that you can go have that, I don't want to call it an intimate conversation. Hopefully you have a life partner, a wife, a spouse that you can share these things with. But even beyond that, having a good friend who you can say, hey, I'm struggling with this today, whether that's, you know, the markets are down and I'm worried about my finances, or hey, I'm struggling with my health at this particular point, or I'm struggling with the eat loss of you know, attaboys and eagle paths that I would normally get. Having those people in your life will help you get through that transition better. And then finding that steady state, uh, it is going to happen. It's just a question of when, and it might be different for each person. Somebody might get there very, very quickly and be ready and prepared and off they go. And somebody else may find the transition hard. But having people to talk to, I think, is critical. Your community, your, your, your relationships, your friend circle, absolutely critical. And one unsurprising thing is that if you think that your work friends were your friends, they're not. I mean, you might have one or two really good friends that stick with you that you've met through work, but for the vast majority of people, anyone who they meet through work are their work acquaintances and they're work friends only as long as you're working with them. Your true friends will be the people that still call you three months, six months, a year later, and want to connect with you because of just who you are. And I've been fortunate, some of the people that were on my sales team before, I still I still golf with them occasionally. I have coffee with some other folks, and I've had some other friends reach out to me now that I'm available for conversations for for their own personal networking and advice. And and that's that provides a different pat on the back. But uh it all goes to your circle of friends and uh just being able to talk through things when you need to.
SPEAKER_00:I think what you said is so important there, that that aspect of who am I, what do I like, what do I actually want to do, what do I actually want to be? There's this, it's not a retirement question, but it tends to come up around retirement because for so much of our lives, it's just this you go to school, you go to university, you get married, you buy a home, you pay off your home, you get promoted, you all, and then all of a sudden it's whoa, I'm at what feels like the end of a conveyor belt of what do I do next? And there's no supposed to's anymore. There's no expectation of what it should be in those difficult questions are forced upon you. And they hopefully start well before retirement. That hopefully should be a lifelong pursuit of answering those. I know I personally love a journal, and that's where I process my thoughts there. It sounds like you like to talk to friends, and that's where that gets worked out. Any other best practices that you would recommend to people who are saying, yeah, those thoughts are starting to creep in. How do I answer them?
SPEAKER_01:Number one, don't ignore them. Um, if if you come from a generation, you know, and this was in part because I'm right on the cusp as a Gen X, but I was on the cusp of the baby boom generation. You don't have feelings. You press those down and you you mash them down into your stomach until they develop into cancer, and then you die early and you don't have to worry about them anymore. Um, that's not a good strategy. Um you need to recognize that some of these feelings that you have, they're legitimate. Um sometimes they're founded in reality, and sometimes they they're just made up, they're amplified in your head because you have just too much time and space to think about them. So recognize, number one, recognize that they exist. And then if they continue to persist in your head and you you recognize that they're causing you some anxiety or some issue, then then start talking about them. And maybe again, you don't talk about them in a ton of detail because you're you're a private person and you don't want to, but just recognizing them and even watching videos like this from other people. So you you the great thing about YouTube and the internet and AI is that you can get all kinds of information. Now you have to be careful about that info because it's not it's not tailored to you. And all of these anonymous personalities on the on the web don't know who you are. And that's why I think that really good personal uh circle of friends is so important. But next to that, if you don't want to share those things or you want to do some preliminary reading, there's tons of resources that are online. And and I was fortunate through through my journey to discover a couple of things about retirement that have helped me just process mentally uh the experience and and the emotions that I'm going through. Um, two of them that I can share. One is that most people in retirement will go through four phases. So this was uh a little bit of an epiphany moment when I discovered this. But one is the first phase is the honeymoon phase, the the vacation phase. You get to go and do all the things, you get to sleep in, and then you get to go on the vacations you always planned on. And that's great until you're tired of that, and you know what, I've done that enough. Now what? And then that second phase is around the sense of loss and this, the the loss of of structure, of purpose, of ego, of reinforcement. It's the loss of money as well, right? Like you just you no longer have that money coming in. So that loss phase can be very emotionally draining when you when you reach that. Then the third phase is the experimentation phase. You start toying with a whole bunch of things. Well, you know what? I'm gonna go be a scuba diver teacher, or I'm gonna, I don't know, I'm gonna take up pottery or mountain biking or whatever it might be. So you experiment with a whole bunch of things that might expose you to other people and create a new community or a new set of relationships. And you'll try a bunch of things and then you'll stop doing some of them, and you'll reach that fourth phase, which really is your steady state, happy stage. And knowing that those are the stages you're gonna go through. It's not 12 stages of grief, but it might be these four stages of retirement of your retirement journey. Once you get to that fourth stage, then you find a new purpose, you find a new circle of friends, you find, you find your steady state, and you will be happier. And that's actually borne out by another study that I found when I was doing a presentation. It was around the happiness you. You are most happy when you're in your early teens, the 18 to 24 year old age, because you're probably still in school, you're in the early stages of your job, you spend most of your time with your friends, it's awesome. Then you get into work and and the happiness level actually dips. It's it's statistically proven. They've done thousands and thousands of studies on this. It doesn't dip a ton, but it dips. It noticeably goes down from your 30s through to about late 40s, 50s. And people go, well, why is that? And it's like, is that because you you start having kids and you start working? Well, in part, it's just you get tugged in so many different directions and you want so many things. Once you get into that later stage of your career, the the third act, the later stages like 45, 50, you've either reached a level of um career progression and financial um stability, and your relationships have, you know, they've all formed. You are who you are now at that point. And you're you're done with all the other stuff. You can start seeing the next phase coming into play, and you start getting happier. And then once you're in that 50, 55 plus range, the happiness goes up again because you're no longer chasing something more all the time. You know, a bigger house, a bigger car, better vacations, more vacations, um, a bigger career advancement. That stuff is is done, and now you've you've settled into really knowing who you are and being happy with it. And knowing that that's the stage that we're now heading into for an early retiree or a or a regular retiree at that 60, 65 range, if you know that that's coming and you just need to push through to get there, you know what? It's a little bit of a weight off your shoulders, or I hope it should be.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's wonderful. And I appreciate you sharing that, Donovan, because there is this sense of am I just wandering off into the darkness never to be found again as I go through these? But if you know that there is studies, people have studied that show and there is a process to this. Now you're not guaranteed to come out of phase two, as you talked about. You there is this sense of you've got to try things, you've got to do new things, you've got to put yourself out there. But if you trust the process, so to speak, there is purpose, there is joy, there is a really fulfilling retirement on the other side. Um, as we wrap, I'm gonna bring back to what you mentioned, the first word you said, which was choice. For that person who's sitting here watching this, saying, Donovan, I'm I'm financially prepared. I've run the numbers, I've worked with my financial planner, I've done this 10, 20, 30 times, but I still can't bring myself to make the choice to retire because I feel like I might be making a mistake. I don't know who I'm gonna be. I don't know what's on the other side. What feedback, what would you recommend to that person looking to retire early, but can't bring themselves to make that choice to do so?
SPEAKER_01:Test it, test it out. Um, that was my original plan. My original plan was to have a you know, a full-time uh role that I was doing previously, but start testing out that that speaking and teaching aspect, you know, on a really limited basis, you know, like maybe once a month kind of a thing. If if I'd had that um as my transition, I mean that would have been my ideal. For people who can make a choice and they're they're in a career, they enjoy the work that they do for the most part. I mean, no job is it, they call it a job and not vacation for a reason. But if you enjoy the work that you do for the most part, but you have an opportunity to start having those conversations, if you trust the people, the boss that you have to work with, and trust is a huge issue. That's a whole other conversation about trust at work. But if you think that you have that ability to have a conversation and start the planning process and say, I'm looking at a change in my role, my responsibilities. Over the next year, here's what I would like. And you have to have some kind of an idea. Then I would say you start exploring that. And you might have the ability to maybe dial back some of the roles and responsibilities in your current job. Maybe you don't travel as much. And in lieu of that travel, you volunteer. Because if that's what you think that you might do in retirement, now you're volunteering a little bit more, but you need to make space for the time to do that. That's not always possible, but if you can start to have those conversations and mentally think through what this might look like for you as an individual, just the mental activity or exercise of thinking it through prepares you for that next stage. And you may not be able to think through every possibility, of course. Some of it's just gonna be ad hoc, but at least doing it a little bit and starting to plan, starting to have the conversations. Um, and again, uh testing out a few things. I would I would say if you could test it out in some way, um, maybe it's just dialing back the work hours and you're not gonna work on the weekends anymore. You're gonna do your stuff on the weekends. That would be super hard for somebody who is used to putting in 80 hours a week and they're available and they're on call on the weekends, taking like whatever it is. That might be enough just to test it out, to dial back just a little bit. Because going whole hog, I had a friend who had a health issue and he he was forced through the health issue. It was it was a major cancer scare. Um, he had to go from full-on, you know, being a doctor 24-7, that was his job, to nothing. All he's focused on is his health at that particular point. And and that can be really scary. You lose all sense of identity when you go from being the doctor to being the patient. So not everyone's gonna go through that that kind of an experience. So if you can test it out ahead of time, that was his his feedback. He goes, I would have loved to be able to step into uh the retirement and start dialing back things on my terms as opposed to somebody else's terms. So take control, take ownership of it, and test it out ahead of time if you can. I like it.
SPEAKER_00:The choice is yours. Test it again, assuming there's trust, assuming there's that relationship there. But Don, but this has been very helpful. I think a lot of people will get a lot out of that. Uh appreciate you coming on. And you do, it looks like a lot of stuff online. If people want to see, can they follow you somewhere? Is there something that they can do to hear more of what you're up to?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I'm gonna be sharing my thoughts on leadership and management, sales, business just through LinkedIn. That that's kind of my chosen platform. Uh maybe one day I'll start a YouTube channel, uh, like some other people that have been successful doing that. I don't know. That might be one of the new challenges and and choices that I make. But uh yeah, check me out on LinkedIn and uh connect with me there or or connect to my page uh called The Good Capitalist. Uh that's where I'll be kind of putting more of my thoughts, ideas, and insights uh for people to learn from.
SPEAKER_00:Love it. Donovan Volt, the Good Capitalist, find him on LinkedIn. Donovan, thank you for joining me for this episode of Retirement Reality. It's been my pleasure, thank you.
