#208 – How To Stay Young As We Age with Doctor Dawn Carr

Wes Moss [00:01:53]:
Doctor Dawn Carr, thank you for being here on the retire sooner podcast. So you were at the Stanford center on Longevity for a period of time as a researcher, and then you did your postdoc at UNC. So are you. Do you consider yourself a tar heel, or was that because when you’re postdoc, not so much.

Dawn Carr [00:02:11]:
Yeah, I have a lot of different. I mean, I did my undergraduate in Arizona state. I did my master’s and doctoral work at Miami University, and then. Yeah, so then postdoc at UNC and then Stanford, and, of course, now, as I see. So I think you’re asking who I’m most loyal to. Is that what I’m hearing?

Wes Moss [00:02:31]:
Yes, I am. Who are you most loyal to?

Dawn Carr [00:02:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I probably have to say Florida state now. I mean, I’ve been here the longest, the eight years here at Florida State, so I think I have to say that. But I do really appreciate the tar heels, and that’s a nice way to.

Wes Moss [00:02:47]:
Say, I appreciate the tar heels. I like that.

Dawn Carr [00:02:49]:
They’re pretty special.

Wes Moss [00:02:51]:
So how much of your time now is research versus are you teaching actively? Are you doing research or both?

Dawn Carr [00:02:59]:
Yeah, most of my time these days is running a research center. So I’m working with researchers. I have some students that I work with. I don’t do much teaching. I have an internship program that I oversee in my center here. But most of my work is definitely doing research and running research teams.

Wes Moss [00:03:20]:
This is maybe my first question. I’ll kind of set this up as a thought. And I thought about that. This weekend, I ran into a neighbor of mine and a new neighbor. New neighbor. So it’s not someone I had ever met before in person. And I think of, and maybe this is just Situa. This is not situational.

Wes Moss [00:03:40]:
I think this is just the life. We all, we see this in life where I can run into a 72 or 73 year old, and they’re kind of. They’re old. They’re kind of like, they strike me as old. And then I run into my new neighborhood and we talk for 20 minutes or so, real friendly. And it just like, he’s young. And when he told me his age, he’s like, I’m 78. So you’ve got a super young 78 year old.

Wes Moss [00:04:09]:
And then we all know people that are 72 or 74 and they don’t feel young.

Dawn Carr [00:04:14]:
Right. Right.

Wes Moss [00:04:15]:
And I think we all see that. I know this is an impossible question to answer because there’s so many layers to this. What is it? Is it genetics? Is it. Is the young one regularly been exercising since they were 30? Is it their diet? Is it physical? Is it mental? I mean, that’s like the whole question around longevity in one question. But I wanted to maybe think about it in that context. Young people who.

Dawn Carr [00:04:40]:
They’re dumbling people you meet, and they just have, I think, what most people respond to when they meet someone that is older than they expect, like, they’re like, how could you be that. That age? That’s not what I envision for 78. I think of someone who’s, you know, not going to be moving very quickly or maybe not interesting. I think that. So I will say that a part of this is just our interpretation of what age looks like. And we’re pretty ageist as a society where we think about old people and getting older as, like, becoming irrelevant and useless and not relevant to our world when we’re younger. And so part of it is we have this sort of stereotype in our head about what it’s like. But at the same time, you definitely meet these people that seem, I’ll say, prematurely older than you would expect, and that really stands out.

Dawn Carr [00:05:34]:
And you’re. I mean, it’s always funny when people say, oh, the golden girls, you know, when I was growing up were, like, the old ladies that were, like, kind of the fun old lady. They were in their fifties, right?

Wes Moss [00:05:45]:
The Goldie girls were in their fifties.

Dawn Carr [00:05:49]:
And maybe early sixties, I mean, depending on which season you’re in. But, yeah, they were in their fifties. And, Terry, you don’t think about old as in your fifties anymore. That sounds silly and ridiculous, but there are definitely these people who are, we’ll say, like you said, 72, and you’re thinking, okay, when I’m 72, I definitely want to be a person who’s not working and enjoying my time. I want to be that person who’s got all the time in the world to. To work on hobbies, to take my time checking out of the grocery store instead of hurrying to get stuff done, like, really have the space to breathe.

Wes Moss [00:06:25]:
By the way, I love the grocery store. That’s like an event for me. If I ever get to the grocery store, my wife will call. She’ll be like, where are you? I’m still. And I’ll say, the other day, I said, I’m shopping. She was like, for what? For what? I was like, I’m at the grocery store. She said, that’s not shopping. That’s grocery shopping.

Wes Moss [00:06:42]:
When you say shopping, you’re, like, buying jeans. But I was like, okay, I’m sorry. I’m grocery shopping. I’m sorry. Keep going.

Dawn Carr [00:06:49]:
Yeah, well, the grocery store is a fascinating. If you’re a sociologist like me, the grocery store is like a microcosm of fascinating human interactions. And there’s all kinds of stuff you see. And when you talk about old people, they shop at different times than people of different ages. So if you’re curious to go watch people of different ages, you go to the grocery store at a particular time. And this has been the case for a long time for lots of different reasons. But when you see someone who’s, like, older than you expect at a grocery store, what you see is they’re leaning on their cart for support. They’re walking more slowly.

Dawn Carr [00:07:23]:
Their steps are more shuffles than steps. These are about mobility, usually the physical mobility. And there’s a lot of factors that influence our physical mobility as we age, but it’s really correlated with a lot. And I think when we look at someone who’s not able to move quickly when they walk. That’s a sign that they’re becoming frail and struggling. And by the way, those things connect to your brain. Frailty with your body leads to cognitive consequences. So then you often see this connection with speaking more slowly.

Dawn Carr [00:07:55]:
Sometimes they can be related, but aren’t always. So there is this sort of, I’ll say, accelerated aging. Some people have, and then the alternative, which are these, like, super angers where it’s like they’re 90 and they’re running marathons and doing all the things that you don’t expect of a 90 year old, and most people don’t live like that. So there are genetic aspects to this. I just lost my aunt, and then that last month, she was 92, smoked for over 70 years. She never eat vegetables or fruits. She broke all the longevity rules, and she was fine. Her brain was fine.

Dawn Carr [00:08:33]:
She was sharp as a lip, and I don’t know why she survived as long as she did. She finally got lung cancer and died very rapidly with very little suffering. She is the example of all the good things. We wouldn’t look at her life and say, well, everyone should smoke for 70 years and eat bacon multiple times a week and avoid fruits and vegetables. We know better than that. So there’s genes that are protected, and some people are just born with that in front of them, both good and bad.

Wes Moss [00:09:06]:
And by the way, have we. I know that there’s. And I don’t know if this is maybe part of your research or not. How has it just been so difficult to identify, like, so take your aunt, that example you hear about once in a while. Smoked for 50, 70 years, but still lived into the nineties. Is there nothing genetically that we can figure out about that person that we can somehow replicate? Is the longevity industry, I would think, has tried to work on that and learn from, I don’t know, sea turtles that live indefinitely. Where are we? Right, the negative salinity. Isn’t it called something like negative salinity where you don’t.

Wes Moss [00:09:49]:
Your cells don’t age? Why have we not been able to figure that out? Why is there no magic potion at all?

Dawn Carr [00:09:54]:
The problem is there’s lots of stuff going on all at the same time. So any one thing, it just doesn’t exist. That’s why there’s never going to be a pill you take, and it’s like the longevity pill, and you could just take that pill and you slow down aging or something like that. I mean, damn it, everybody wants.

Wes Moss [00:10:11]:
Are you sure about that? We have AI now.

Dawn Carr [00:10:13]:
I know. Maybe there’s something coming? Maybe AI will help us find the magic pill, but I don’t think that’s ever likely to happen. The issue is there’s a whole bunch of factors that are going on, and you might think of it as you have a genetic capacity to live a certain length, and the lifestyles we have either reduce that capacity or help you reach that capacity. And we don’t ever know because we just don’t have enough information or insights about your genetic capacity. But we have the, if we’re born in environments that aren’t very supportive and we have a rough childhood, that’s going to reduce our capacity. On the other hand, if we have all the resources we need growing up, that might help us reach that capacity. So my aunt probably should have lived to be 105 and she gave up some years. Right.

Dawn Carr [00:11:01]:
We might think of it.

Wes Moss [00:11:02]:
That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so let’s start with. So, first of all, what do we get? What do we get wrong about? And I want to come back to mobility because I think you answered, that’s an interesting way to look at this, is that there’s mobility. You slow down in pace and movement, and you slow down cognitively kind of all the same time. And that’s what we see as age. It’s like, oh, that person is slower and. But what do we get wrong about aging?

Dawn Carr [00:11:31]:
Well, first of all, probably the thing we get wrong is that it’s all bad. I mean, I. I mean, let’s start there. Getting older. I mean, you, most people, as they get older, they feel more free and they feel more connected with themselves. That’s the right thing. That’s part of development. As we get older, we have this amazing opportunity to better make sense of things that maybe we weren’t able to handle when we were younger.

Dawn Carr [00:12:00]:
You have experience to draw from. And they always say, like, don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s so trite. But as you get older, you actually don’t sweat the song because you have perspective. You look backwards and you say, I’ve been through these hard things before. I mean, unless you’re like some rare individual that had no hard things happen to you. And, wow, I don’t know very many.

Wes Moss [00:12:23]:
Of those people, but I don’t know.

Dawn Carr [00:12:24]:
That many of them.

Wes Moss [00:12:26]:
There’s some, yeah.

Dawn Carr [00:12:27]:
And I will say there’s something to be said for having had too many bad things happen to you that doesn’t work well. But for most people, the benefits of aging are that you have more ability to see with clear eyes what really matters. And you’re able to highlight and focus your time and attention on those things. And from my perspective, most, well, I’d say most conversations I have, the thing people think are most important are having lots of money and maybe saying when they’re young and those are the least important things. As you get older now, being poor is bad, but being super rich isn’t as important as having enough. And so once you have enough, that’s enough.

Wes Moss [00:13:12]:
That’s enough.

Dawn Carr [00:13:13]:
But if you have no friends and you have enough money, that’s way worse than being poor and having lots of friends. If I were to give up one of those things, it’s the people in our lives that matter the most, that give us meaning and purpose.

Wes Moss [00:13:26]:
So I love this idea of perspective, mobility, perspective, and then socialization. So clearly that is, there’s a link, right? Probably undisputed socialization leads to. Well, I think about Dan Buettner and his work around longevity, around the world, and one of the cultures, I think it’s the okinawan culture, where women have these moas where they live together, they kind of pledge, and they live their friends forever. It’s like a golf group plus one forever. Does it just change us psychologically? Does it keep us healthy psychologically? How does it help longevity? Does it give us purpose? Yeah. Tell me why it works or what does it do?

Dawn Carr [00:14:10]:
Well, I mean, you can be really simple. If you’re sitting in your bed and you’re dying and you’re thinking back on your life, it becomes really crystal clear to say, what am I leaving the world with in my absence? And usually the thing you want to leave the world with are the people and the things that, the connections that you made and you left behind. And I think it’s that simple. But let’s go further, because socialization is also about doing things. You’re building ideas, you’re building solutions. You’re helping make one person’s or two persons or many people’s lives better in some way if you’re really having an impact and you’re able to see those benefits through those people. But when you meet with people, you’re also physically doing things. If you go out and spend time with friends, especially in these blue zones and other places, you see these connections.

Dawn Carr [00:15:11]:
They’re usually doing something. They’re physically moving and they’re using their brains. And when you talk about longevity, I always say it’s kind of simple. You want to make sure you’re physically, socially, and cognitively active. And when you’re connecting with people in meaningful ways, you’re often doing all three at the same time, because the reality is we need to exercise. But more isn’t always better. More is enough. Like you reach a point where enough, there’s enough.

Dawn Carr [00:15:44]:
We don’t know what the enough is yet, by the way, and it probably varies per person, but there’s a point at which you don’t have as much return on investment with certain things. And with exercise, doing nothing is really bad, but doing even a small amount gives you lots of gains. And exercise has remarkable impacts on everything else. But you wouldn’t want to exercise 10 hours a day. That would hurt you. But when it comes to social engagement, there’s a really great body of literature on volunteering, and I think it’s actually the best form of social engagement for really studying, because these aren’t people who are just like friends of yours or family members. You have to be around. These are strangers who choose to be around, and you have an explicit purpose to connect and give back.

Dawn Carr [00:16:36]:
When it comes to volunteering, you pretty much max out the benefits to health of any other health activity you can get if you’re just volunteering two to 3 hours a week, which isn’t that much, but, but the health returns in later life are as good as any, any health behavior I can get my hands on. And I think that’s fascinating.

Wes Moss [00:16:59]:
It is fascinating. So it’s one of the primary pillars of a happy retiree is something called what we call core pursuits. I call these hobbies on steroids. On average, they have 3.6. Caught four core pursuits. The number one, one for the happy retiree group versus the unhappy came back in our research was volunteering what I didn’t ever dig down on, and that what I’m asking you about is, so, first of all, the amount of time which you’ve already just kind of answered, is it just a lifelong, it’s like you’re currently volunteering, or did you also say that it’s almost like exercise if you’re doing it in your forties? It’s like it builds up over time. And what, what kind of volunteering? Or does that not really matter just to be some sort of volunteer? So maybe just.

Dawn Carr [00:17:47]:
Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to you.

Wes Moss [00:17:48]:
Volunteering.

Dawn Carr [00:17:49]:
Yeah, I do that. So there’s not as much information on the type of volunteering that you’re doing, but we’re going to talk. But most of the science of volunteering and health outcomes are related to what we call formal volunteering. This isn’t going and making a pie for your neighbor. This is working for an organization that has a mission, and it has, it leverages volunteer labor for a particular outcome that is about serving others in some way. So it can be a lot of different things, but the most common kinds of activities are usually working for a formal organization and giving your time to, like, work at a hospital and, you know, help with the activities around the hospital, or working often times with children or something like that. Tutoring, okay, but this either one of those examples.

Wes Moss [00:18:39]:
Church, I think what comes to my.

Dawn Carr [00:18:41]:
Church, to me, a lot of church churches facilitate volunteering. So, for example, like I, when I was a teenager, we, at church, we would go do, like, build houses for habitat for Humanity and things like that, work at food pantries and help support the community. And in those situations, too, there’s physical activity involved, and there’s social engagement with others with a shared mission and purpose. And it reinforces your identity as the kind of person that supports others. It helps you build empathy, which makes you feel like you matter, and it helps you feel good. And there’s some growing evidence that there’s physiological changes within your body when you help other people, because you can sort of think about bad stress, makes you feel inflamed or gives you inflammation within your system. Good activities, these sort of helping activities sort of like decrease that so that when you’re faced with stress, your body doesn’t react. You have the capacity to stop the bad stress reactions from occurring.

Dawn Carr [00:19:48]:
And that’s sort of what we’re seeing in a physiological way.

Wes Moss [00:19:52]:
And this is similar to exercise.

Dawn Carr [00:19:54]:
Similar to exercise? Yeah, probably the mechanisms are different because exercise, it’s about blood flow to certain parts of throughout. Throughout your body, but there’s still certainly some movement here. Usually when you’re volunteering, you’re walking a lot more than you would. You know, you’re certainly not sitting and watching television, which is the kiss of death for longevity. Right. There’s nothing that is probably worse for your health.

Wes Moss [00:20:18]:
Would you consider that, like, one of the worst things?

Dawn Carr [00:20:20]:
Everybody argues with me about this one. I believe there’s a place for tv, just not as a primary replacement for work. You retire and you sit down and watch tv during the hours you would be working. That’s a good way to die young, in my view, especially since you’re not doing anything with others and you’re not physically moving. And it would obviously depend on what you’re watching if you’re learning something. But, yeah, I would say avoid tv except for special occasions. View it as a treat, not as a primary activity, but volunteering is fascinating because it tends to be something that is very accessible. There’s even some efforts to start finding volunteer activities you can do remotely, and I think that’s going to be an exciting opportunity.

Dawn Carr [00:21:08]:
With aging, we’re not sure if we’ll get the same bang for the buck. I think being in the community is better than being on your computer volunteering, but there’s this meaningful connection you get, and it helps you with physiology. Think about volunteering as something that might help you with your brain, to feel happier. That’s easy. You’re less lonely. And we know loneliness is one of the worst things for you. Might as well pick up smoking if you’re gonna be lonely, right? It’s the same kind of problem. Well, not exactly, but, you know, it’s similar kind of negative effect.

Dawn Carr [00:21:43]:
Yeah, but volunteering helps you build connection and so forth. But what’s fascinating to me is it’s protective of your physical health and your cognitive health. Those are things people don’t anticipate. And you say, well, how could volunteering help your physical health? So you see these people who are struggling physically, this is by way of those physiological responses when we don’t have information, and physiological stress responses that come with everyday life and aging. These are lower in people. We hypothesize, and there’s some growing evidence to support that, and that’s why we think we see these physical benefits.

Wes Moss [00:22:30]:
I think the other thing, too, about volunteering. I love the thought around formal volunteering is a really interesting concept. And I think about, even at a church, that facilitates multiple different. Maybe they’re different ministries, and one is food related, one is care related, one is children related. It’s not a huge investment in your time if whatever you pick isn’t quite right. Is the other thing around volunteering? It’s almost as though I look at volunteering, depending on the kind of volunteering you’re doing, is that if it’s not working out, there’s usually other options to go to kind of relatively quickly. It’s not like you’re trapped in a volunteering job that you may not like.

Dawn Carr [00:23:13]:
Oh, yeah.

Wes Moss [00:23:14]:
So I do love, and again, to your point, you have done studies around this, or there have been studies that have shown that there is this physiological benefit from that, because I’ve never heard that before, and it’s fascinating.

Dawn Carr [00:23:27]:
Yeah, some of the work is mine, but I have a colleague that’s particularly done. We call it biomarkers, where we have little bits of biological data, and they can collect that information on your stress response on a day you volunteer and on a day you don’t volunteer. And just that alone shows reduced stress response. And it’s just really fascinating to sort of see that. And there’s, the theory is that you just, things just don’t bother you as much when you have your eye on the prize. I know, I know that things are fine. I’m connected with a purpose, and the small stuff just doesn’t affect you. In the same way.

Wes Moss [00:24:11]:
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Wes Moss [00:24:39]:
dot. That’s your wealth.com dot. Okay, let me ask you this. In general, on average, do we get that same physiological biomarker, reduce stress from our work, our primary jobs? And my next question is a little related to that, which would be, do you see, as people age and they stop their primary jobs and they stop working, does stress go down or does life get throw you similar but different kinds of stress? So those are two totally separate questions. So let’s, so again, work versus volunteering, do we get.

Dawn Carr [00:25:17]:
Yeah, the bang for the butt, same situation. So if you just look straight up at the averages, 2 hours of work, volunteering and 20 hours of work are about the same in terms of the health benefits. If you account for all the other extraneous factors that would otherwise explain those things, that’s just the work we’ve been doing at a kind of a population level. Just as a researcher that studies work in later life, the thing is, it really is dependent on the kind of work that you’re doing. If you have people who are in jobs that are frankly dangerous to your health, and we know lots of people do, they’re not going to benefit from continuing to work. They’re better off doing something that is out of those environments. Those of us who have cush jobs like I do, sitting in a chair and working on a computer and, you know, working with people and thinking all day long, that’s good for me. As long as I’m exercising too.

Dawn Carr [00:26:22]:
So I’m not too sedentary. Boy, that’s going to give me benefits of all types, and I’m going to get some of that kind of good feeling stuff, because I’m mentoring people and helping others, I’m doing work that has a positive impact on society, hopefully.

Wes Moss [00:26:38]:
So as long as we’re not doing dangerous work. And at first, I thought you were going to say it’s almost dangerous if you have a sedentary job. But you mean literally, like if you’re working on power lines or something like, that’s danger, danger, danger. But the benefits of working, helping people, interacting with other humans, that to you, even though it’s like, it’s not, it’s ten times less good than volunteering. It’s still healthy.

Dawn Carr [00:27:05]:
Well, that’s on average, because we’re not accounting for those differences. So if you were to just look at people who are in jobs where they get to use their brain a lot, we sometimes call it cognitively complex jobs. And these are jobs where you have a lot of autonomy and you have to think creatively and you have engagement with other people on a regular basis. Those people benefit from continuing to work, and they maintain cognitive function longer than those who are in jobs that don’t do that.

Wes Moss [00:27:40]:
Have you ever studied or read any studies about. I guess this happens a lot, but I guess I think about this for younger folks. So I think retire sooner. Audience and an extreme example. And again, we’re trying to help people retire six months sooner, a year sooner, or two years sooner. Not an extreme, but if you were to look at extreme cases where you end up with a, I always think of technology where somebody, they end up with $50 million of, they worked at Netflix or whatever it might be, and then they stop at 40. Do you know of the ramifications around that? Or do those people, if it doesn’t work for them, they end up going back and they continue to work? My kids asked me this the other day, dawn. It was something on the news about somebody in tech that was something about 100 million or five, some giant number, right? And one of my, I think my twelve year old asked, why does that guy keep working? Why is he still working if he already has XYZ? And I tried to explain it to him, but what would you say to my kid? What would you say to my kid?

Dawn Carr [00:28:50]:
I would say that after a certain amount of money, working has nothing to do with making money anymore. It’s about having a purpose in your life where you feel like you’re having an impact, and money is a way that you’re rewarded for that. And we have a market value for that work. And that changes depending on what time and history you’re living and how we value things in the United States. We value certain types of work more than others. And the pay is commensurate with that, as economists would argue, anyhow. But most of the time, and especially once you have sufficient money and there are plenty of people who have enough money to retire, and they don’t. And sometimes that’s because they’re afraid that they’re going to end up needing more than they expect.

Dawn Carr [00:29:35]:
And frankly, then they’re just, I mean, you might argue they’re just sort of hoarding enough so they don’t have fear. And the thing is, you know, retirement is more than just about not working. It’s about the time in our life when we’re in a new phase where work is not the center of what we’re doing. People who have plenty of money often want to work in a way that’s like volunteering. You have a choice in the matter. You know, at any point, you could walk away, and there is nothing better than having control over that decision. When you’re in a job where you know you can’t leave because you won’t pay your next bill and you have no control over what time you come and go, that is the worst kind of work in terms of, you know, feeling like you’re, I’ll say, sort of imprisoned by your desire and need for money once you reach a certain point. It’s fun.

Dawn Carr [00:30:25]:
I love what I do. I would do it for free. I would say that I don’t tell my boss that I don’t want to actually do it for.

Wes Moss [00:30:31]:
Don’t tell Florida State, I won’t tell the provost.

Dawn Carr [00:30:33]:
But I love what I’m doing. And I feel that I have so much autonomy and control over that, that the hard work feels like fun work. And so few of us, I think, are lucky to have that at younger ages. But if you retire young, most people do go back to work. I mean, almost everyone goes back to work and they may say, oh, I want to retire, and they want to retire as soon as they can. The pattern is within two years, more than half of people go back to work at some amount of time. And they love it. They’re doing it because they want to.

Dawn Carr [00:31:09]:
They found an activity that gives them joy. And sometimes it’s, I want a little fun money that I can play with, and it gives me a little space for that. But often it’s. It’s 20 hours or less and it’s stuff that they like to do, or they start a business and they get to be like a part time entrepreneur doing meaningful activities, and they’re happier than they’ve ever been in their whole life.

Wes Moss [00:31:32]:
Oh, so you actually studied this.

Dawn Carr [00:31:33]:
Oh, yeah.

Wes Moss [00:31:34]:
Where do I read about this? I want to read about this.

Dawn Carr [00:31:36]:
Well, there’s a 20 hours.

Wes Moss [00:31:38]:
Yeah, well, so you only need 20 hours or less. You need 20 hours or less. 50% of people go back.

Dawn Carr [00:31:44]:
Yeah, more than half.

Wes Moss [00:31:45]:
These are things I need to do. I need to do a whole podcast.

Dawn Carr [00:31:48]:
Well, maybe, I don’t know. There’s a concept like, it became more common about 2000, right, right around the first dot bubble where people started going back to work after they retired. It was less common before because we had pension programs that disincentivized returning to work. But now we have these things we call defined contribution plans. And what that means is lots of people don’t contribute enough and they need more money, and they find themselves, especially the boomers, since the 2008 recession, they need more money. And so that’s driving part of it. But certainly since then, more than half of people who retire, leave full time work, come back and work part time.

Wes Moss [00:32:32]:
Un retirement.

Dawn Carr [00:32:33]:
Un retirement. And so Nicole Mastiff, she’s, I think she’s at Harvard now, but she sort of coined that term unretirement. And, but there’s, for a lot of years, people would talk about these things called bridge jobs. And it’s like your bridge between your career job and your retirement. I don’t know if I love that term anymore, but I like this idea of post retirement work because your brain is retired. I’m doing this because I want to. I’m retired, but I’m choosing to go back to work to do this thing I want to do. And I know at any time I could walk away.

Wes Moss [00:33:09]:
Post retirement work, we call it that, that bridge. I think of that as kind of the retirement gray zone where used to be black and white. Now there’s this long gray period of where you’re, I like this, define it as 20 hours a week. In general, though, do those of, let’s say, more normal, quote, normal retirement age, let’s call it mid sixties. Do you see the lower stress for that group on average when they’ve stopped working?

Dawn Carr [00:33:35]:
Yeah. It all depends on how you define your as. So your work is different. And there’s sort of this honeymoon period after you leave retirement, where I think the first six and thens are probably where you see it the most, the sort of reduced stress. It’s acute, it’s immediate. Absolutely. People report higher life satisfaction in those first year or so of retirement because they’re just sort of recovering from not having a real break for a long time, very often. And that’s good for everyone.

Dawn Carr [00:34:10]:
It sort of tells you probably we should structure our lives in a way where we have kind of six month breaks every seven years or something, and probably we might like our lives a little bit better. Most of us don’t have the ability to do that, but I suspect it’s a sign that that would benefit us.

Wes Moss [00:34:28]:
I like that idea, by the way.

Dawn Carr [00:34:30]:
But that after that six months or a year, a lot of people start getting itchy because it turns out routine gives us, again, the sense of, why am I here? What am I supposed to do today? And if you have the sense of. I mean, I say sense of purpose, but there’s like, what are your goals for today? And a lot of people that’s maybe defined as they’re entering. Some people leave work because they have a sick family member and they’re caring for them and then give them their role, some purpose.

Wes Moss [00:35:01]:
Yeah.

Dawn Carr [00:35:01]:
The sense of, like, what’s my role in life now? And we spend so many years as workers defining our role around our work task or sometimes parents accomplishment. Yeah. Yeah. It, like, sets you up. Like, what am I here to do? And if you retire and you don’t have any role set up, that that’s okay for a little while, but there’s a point at which that becomes stressful, actually. So it’s a different kind of stress that returns. So when you say, is it stressful? Well, maybe you create new structure for your time. But if people don’t create sort of a system for what their day and their life and their sense of identity revolves around, they don’t do well.

Wes Moss [00:35:45]:
So you’re saying there is great power behind a routine. It really is extraordinarily helpful.

Dawn Carr [00:35:51]:
Yeah. I mean, you’re also talking to someone who hates having someone tell me what I need to do from one day to the next. I don’t love routine in that regard, but it is, in fact, still a routine. I mean, the variation within that range. I get up and I do this. I exercise and I take my kids to school, and then I go to work, and then I come home and then I make dinner, and then I, you know, and I have these sort of things I do in the order in which I do them might change from day to day, but if you take away that big chunk in the middle and I don’t have kids at home anymore, which I won’t, you know, in five years or six years I’m going to have a different kind of pattern to my day. And that kind of gives, gives me kind of the insights about my sense of identity and how I’m giving back in the world and to others. And if it’s all about myself, people are like, oh, it’s, I earned this money, I get to choose what I want to do.

Dawn Carr [00:36:40]:
It’s really not that fulfilling to just take care of yourself all the time. Most of the time that doesn’t take us very far. Like meet your needs, sure, but the rest there usually needs to be something that you’re really digging into. I think that’s why people go back to work. It’s so much easier for them to wrap their head around that.

Wes Moss [00:36:58]:
I want to talk about socialization. It feels to me think about so money on the scale of again needing some sort of foundation, eliminating this fear we’re going to run out. That’s a pretty big deal, right? It’s like on a scale one to ten, it’s a ten. But it also gets press and coverage like it’s a twelve. It gets all the pressure. If you think about it, it gets a lot of it. Then you think about socialization which is a ten and it gets like a two on the thought around what do you do? Like what are you doing about it? There is so little on a relative basis, not zero on, hey, this is a huge deal, but what are we doing about it in life that is I guess talked about in any sort of structure or like hey, you really need to spend x amount of time making sure you are being social, forcing yourself to do more socialization, cultivating that. And I guess I just, a, wanted your opinion on that and b, I wanted to talk about men versus women.

Wes Moss [00:38:08]:
And then just like the practical steps of keeping that cultivation of socialization going.

Dawn Carr [00:38:15]:
Yeah, those are awesome things to talk about. First of all, I think you’re right. When you think about if you want to talk about a retirement portfolio, I think that’s a good way to think about it. You have your money stuff and then you have your people stuff, your social side and then you have your daily tasks and then where is exercise fitting in there? And it should be if you’re doing those things as meaningful activities, those social activities, those physical activities, and then you’re making sure you have enough money, that’s your balanced, that’s a real balanced portfolio in preparation for retirement.

Wes Moss [00:38:52]:
I like it. Money, people, exercise. Was there one more?

Dawn Carr [00:38:55]:
And tasks, things, your roles, those things we were just talking about what is your role for what you’re doing in your day. And that can be those other things, of course, but you could spend time in lots of different ways. But it’s about figuring out what your sort of meaning and structure of your day centers around, tasks that are meaningful for you. But if we go to socialization, I do feel like what’s happened? And I think the pandemic, you know, just like, really put the gas on these trends. There hasn’t been as much emphasis to social relationships as any of these other things for most of the time. And sometimes people are like, well, I just don’t have time for friends because I’m working so much or I have kids at home or all these things. And the issue is you don’t suddenly hit retirement and say, okay, now I’m going to get friends. I mean, I’m sure there are people who are like, okay, my task for today is to go get a friend.

Dawn Carr [00:39:56]:
But, you know, most of the time, you know what?

Wes Moss [00:39:59]:
We’ve circled right back to the grocery store. I’m gonna go shopping, actually.

Dawn Carr [00:40:02]:
I love that. It is a good place to go meet a new friend. I like this. Yeah, we’re gonna come back. I think that the issue, honey, I’m.

Wes Moss [00:40:10]:
Going to the friend store. I’m out shopping. I’m at the friend store. Yeah, they’ve got a sale on friends. All right. Sorry.

Dawn Carr [00:40:18]:
I do think people think about that. If they’re highly motivated people with their careers, they’re often, like, focused really hard, often at the cost of losing relationships across their lifespan. And they think, but this is what’s most important. It’s right in front of me. Money is driving me because I want to make sure I get the promotion or the thing. And so at the cost of losing all the other stuff, and what you’re actually doing is you’re setting yourself up for a shorter life, probably because you don’t have the thing. The real stuff that matters in your life isn’t, again, what’s in your bank account, assuming you have enough. It’s who you’re sharing your day with and how you’re spending your time, and you don’t do that once you retire.

Dawn Carr [00:41:02]:
This has to be something that’s cultivated across your life. Course, you learned how to make friends when you’re kids, and you’re supposed to use those skills to continue to develop meaningful connections with others across your life. And, and those things become more and more important as you get older. And this is the litmus test I often give people. And I’m. I haven’t taught undergraduates in a while. But I want to hear this.

Wes Moss [00:41:27]:
Wait, this is a litmus test. For what?

Dawn Carr [00:41:29]:
For if you have good social health.

Wes Moss [00:41:32]:
Oh, okay, let’s hear it.

Dawn Carr [00:41:34]:
So here’s the thing. If you were to have a terrible emergency in the middle of the night, do you have at least two different people you could call who would drop everything and come help you who are not your spouse and don’t live with you?

Wes Moss [00:41:49]:
Two? Yeah. Okay.

Dawn Carr [00:41:51]:
And if you have at least two people that would drop everything and help you most of the time, you have a sufficient number of people in your life to support meaningful social health.

Wes Moss [00:42:06]:
Now, what if everyone’s phone is. What if phones are on silent?

Dawn Carr [00:42:09]:
I know this is a big problem. It’s a theory of, do you have two people? But I mean, the actual practice, theoretical. You’re gonna have to, like, have them on, find friends and make their phone buds or something.

Wes Moss [00:42:22]:
So’s, yeah, so’s, hold on. Does other family count, or would you.

Dawn Carr [00:42:27]:
I usually say, I want you to not think about other family, but that’s, that’s cultural, to be fair, because in certain cultures, you really focus primarily on family. And this is true for especially hispanic. A lot of hispanic cultures where they’re really large, robust families, and that is their social connection. And it is very effective. I would just say a lot of other cultures have not cultivated that kind of intense family relationship bond that they have. And so I usually say, just to be on the safe side, let’s think about non family, because that’s what you should be. And it’s not to be like, go to the friend star and make sure you bring two home. It’s that you’re cultivating trust and vulnerability with other humans on a regular basis.

Dawn Carr [00:43:18]:
And those things can go away in a heartbeat. So you can’t like, not watering. I got a plant in my office, and I’m looking at it, and it’s. It’s reminding me of dead leaves over here. I forgot to water my plant last week. You do the same thing with your friends. If you don’t, don’t go away. The point about non family is they have just, like, a volunteer job, the choice to walk away at any given time.

Dawn Carr [00:43:41]:
And so you have these regular engagements that you’re feeding and you’re helping nurture over time, and those you keep with you over time. You can’t just go get her.

Wes Moss [00:43:52]:
It’s almost a certain. There’s a different value set that a non family friend brings because it does take a little. It just takes a little bit more effort. Whereas your brother should be there for you, like, forever.

Dawn Carr [00:44:05]:
You would assume, even if you don’t.

Wes Moss [00:44:06]:
If my brother’s listening, just, I’m saying, like, if I don’t call for like a whole month, like, you’re still supposed to be there.

Dawn Carr [00:44:13]:
Yeah. There’s a word for. It’s filial responsibility. This is sometimes what they use. If you have, if you’re family and you’re related, you can not very much care for a family member, but still feel obligated to help be there for them when things matter, friends, you can have a deep connection and have a falling out and not talk to them again. They have the choice to walk away. And there’s something powerful about that, actually, because in order to nurture those meaningful connections again, it’s time, the investment of time and meaningful conversation, so much so that you feel that someone is going to give you grace if you screw up. And we only give people grace when they screw up, when we have enough trust and time under our belts to say that was just a moment in time.

Wes Moss [00:45:07]:
This year, it’s a popular headline that this the peak year for 65 year olds turning like 11,250 a day. Like five years ago, it was 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 a day. So today, I always think of that group as there’s five, there’s 10,000 people a day turning 70 right now because they were turning 65 five years ago. So you’ve got this aging population and you run into. And I’ve certainly seen that this is the reality of life, is that as you get up in age, people die, right? Your friends die or they get sick or they move away. And I think it’s harder for the 75 year old, the 85 year old, to maintain that just because of the practicality of our lifespan. So to some extent, that’s this constant. You almost have to always be cultivating friends in case somebody gets divorced and moves away.

Wes Moss [00:46:04]:
I remember a period of time, I remember after college, everyone’s always heard all your life that 50% of all people get divorced. I remember thinking like, ten years after college, like, hey, wait, I don’t know. I don’t know anybody that’s gotten divorced. I know a lot of people get married and then all of a sudden, maybe it was like twelve years later, I don’t know what year it was. Then all of a sudden it was like, oh, wait a minute. Okay, I see now. Lots of people are getting divorced. But in that divorce, I remember one year, two of my best friends got divorced.

Wes Moss [00:46:31]:
And they moved. And it’s like, wait a minute. Even your great friends don’t necessarily stick around.

Dawn Carr [00:46:38]:
They don’t.

Wes Moss [00:46:38]:
That’s the other issue. Yeah.

Dawn Carr [00:46:39]:
We have sort of seasons of our lives and different kinds of people come and go. And sometimes that’s because you mutually benefit. When you have kids, you need people who can pick up your kids. And there’s sort of an exchange thing going on. And the true friendships don’t require exchange, but sometimes they’re built foundationally on those exchanges because you’re like, we both have skin in the game on this thing, and we’re going to build from that. And then even when the skin in the game sort of is no longer a factor, does that relationship hold? And there’s something to be said for having relationships that aren’t the deep, deep, deep ones, but plenty that are very functional relationships because we need others in our lives. And the part that people often miss, I think, is that asking for help builds connection. It doesn’t create a burden on others.

Dawn Carr [00:47:31]:
And we often think, I’m not going to ask for help because I’m strong and I’m independent, and I will just say, that’s B’s. And in fact, we don’t live in a world where we should ever be thinking about independence. We should be thinking about interdependence within social relationships with others. And if we aren’t, you’ll probably be lonely for a good bit of your life, and that’s not going to be good for you.

Wes Moss [00:47:55]:
Okay. Do you have a particular. So let’s say somebody’s listening right now, and they are that hard charger. And I particularly see this with entrepreneurs. It’s executives, entrepreneurs that are just like, they’re totally consumed with work. And they do to some extent, they have this excuse that they’re kind of always working. And I think maybe more so. Why they can get limited socially is that they’re always thinking about work.

Wes Moss [00:48:27]:
So it’s hard for them to even, like, go outside of that. It’s like they can’t relate at some point. Cause they’re so involved. Is there, and maybe this is why this doesn’t get as much fodder or press, but is there a, is there a doctor, Don Carr, prescription around that to make sure that you’re healthy socially?

Dawn Carr [00:48:47]:
I would say that if you’re not doing something in person with another person who you’re not related to and is required to spend time with you at least once a week, it’s insufficient. You’re gonna lose.

Wes Moss [00:49:00]:
That’s good. Right. That’s a big. That’s on your rx list.

Dawn Carr [00:49:05]:
Yeah. And I think a lot of people are like, well, yeah, I have all these friends at work, but this is the problem. And you were asking about gender differences earlier. We’re socialized, as you know, in, based on gender, and these things are changing over time. But the men who are in that however many thousand a day turning 65 group, they were brought up at a time when men were supposed to be providers, and that was what made them valuable to their families and to society. And that there’s no space in that definition for being a good friend to others. They might have those things, but they have to say priority one is providing. And so if providing for them meant I have to cut off my social relationships, they might reach retirement, stop working, and feel like they’re not important in the world anymore, because the thing that made them important and valuable is gone, and that’s terrible.

Wes Moss [00:50:04]:
Providing.

Dawn Carr [00:50:05]:
Yeah. Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been raised where work, even if it became a part of their life, was not front and center. Always they were socialized, especially, again, the 65 plus group, to focus on family immunity and being a good member of their household, of helping keep everybody up and going. So even if they were working as many hours as their spouse, women have, especially in this cohort, done all these other things. And although that was hard at the time, when they’re working, when they reach retirement, it’s one of many roles that they’re losing. So they still have a whole bunch left behind that help them have a sense of connection and meaning, and they have social relationships embedded in those social roles, so they’re more protected socially. They’re more practiced at flexing those social skills on a regular basis than men have been traditionally. So I would say we kind of did it wrong in the way that we set men up for retirement because of that.

Dawn Carr [00:51:09]:
So I think new generations are better.

Wes Moss [00:51:12]:
Okay, so you’re saying that the boomers, it is a little, on average, it’s harder for men, I think, so, to keep a healthier social network, whereas millennials maybe not so much, or Gen X maybe not so much.

Dawn Carr [00:51:25]:
Well, you could think about that in the men and women are equally bad off. I think there’s a lot of evidence saying that the younger generations were hit hardest by the pandemic. They were the most lonely because they spent so much time online. They didn’t have a lot of people that they practiced spending time in person with. And I do see that as being key. I think there’s a lot that can be done with online connections and virtual lives, and there’s a lot of value with socially connecting. I mean, we’re doing it right now. We’re talking online.

Dawn Carr [00:51:59]:
There’s a lot that can happen there. It’s important, but it’s not a replacement for in person engagements. The physiological response you get from being in a physical space with another person is really powerful, and it requires you to be vulnerable in a different way than you can be if you’re on the phone or if you’re on a computer. You have all these unspoken things that people are reading about you, how you walk, how you stand, how your eyes are moving when you’re communicating, how you’re breathing. We pick up on these small cues, and that’s what builds this connection to another person, is you’re in this shared space, sharing this moment together, and that’s building trust, and you’re able to be vulnerable and build connection. And this is what I’m talking about. I think it’s really something we don’t prioritize narrowly enough. And for those of you who do spend most of your time in a remote job, you love the grocery store for that exact reason.

Wes Moss [00:53:02]:
I love the grocery store either way.

Dawn Carr [00:53:07]:
My husband works remotely, and he’s always like, oh, oh, oh, what can I get at the grocery store for you? And he’s like, I just need to be around people today because I’ve been online all day, and I think there is something to that. And retirement is pretty much like that 24 hours a day. So, yeah, I think that’s part of the reason. The reason we like to go. Go out in person and at least have these more peripheral connections with others. They matter too.

Wes Moss [00:53:34]:
All right. Online friends don’t count as much. Work friends, I don’t know if you finished that work friends don’t count as they don’t count, or they might go away when you stop working.

Dawn Carr [00:53:45]:
They might. Yeah. So work friends are great, but they are a different kind of relationship. If they’re only friends at work, it makes work great, but it’s still a work related social engagement. I think if you bring your work friends home, that’s different than their friends, and I think we have to be really clear about that. You benefit socially from being in work environments that you feel socially embedded in, and you think you matter and you’re doing something with other people, that’s great. But, yeah, we have to be thinking about friends. That’s just as important as everything else.

Dawn Carr [00:54:21]:
And in fact, I would argue it’s more important if we’re really investing in our lives and our futures. I hope you’re thinking about, we don’t raise our kids so that at 18, they can walk away and we never see them again. We’re hoping that we’re raising them to have a relationship with us that will extend throughout their adult lives as long as we’re lucky to have them. I hope that’s what people are trying to do. I think we should be thinking about friendships in a similar way, we’re helping cultivate those long term memories and connections to our history. But as you get older, you do lose friends, and that’s really tough. So you had mentioned you’re in your eighties and a lot of your friends might die, and you don’t have very many left. So here’s my advice about that.

Dawn Carr [00:55:06]:
Make friends who are of all ages.

Wes Moss [00:55:09]:
Yes.

Dawn Carr [00:55:10]:
And that’s important.

Wes Moss [00:55:11]:
Intergenerational.

Dawn Carr [00:55:12]:
Absolutely. We should be learning. I learn more from my graduate students about all kinds of things, and I love being around them because they remind me of where my blind spots are. And we should never assume that we know it all just because we’re old or older than we used to be. There’s so many exciting things to learn about in the world, and we should be curious about other people who are very different from us. And that’s a really exciting part of aging as well. Being surrounded by people for different ages gives us more variability and more kinds of environments to be exposed to.

Wes Moss [00:55:48]:
So let’s get a little more practical just for a second here. Roles. I’m thinking this, like, venn diagram of you. I love your Venn diagram of money people. Exercise, roles, core, purse, core, these hobbies on steroids. I got the question enough, dawn, that we made this core pursuit finder. So I surveyed a bunch of happy retirees and found the top 120 activities that they are passionate about, anywhere from woodworking to tennis. Right.

Wes Moss [00:56:19]:
But by the way, which is the. And you’ve heard of the tennis study from Norway on longevity and tennis. It adds 9.7 years to your life. Cause it kind of does all your. It checks every one of your boxes a. It barely costs any money. You have to do it with, like, at least three other people. It is exercise, and I guess it’s a role, too.

Dawn Carr [00:56:38]:
Yeah. It gives you. It gives you something to work towards. Yeah, I’m all about it.

Wes Moss [00:56:42]:
What about finding and cultivating these? Like, do you. Do you have any prescription for that?

Dawn Carr [00:56:48]:
I also think you don’t usually retire and suddenly figure out who you are, who you want to be. When you grow up, I mean, we should be cultivating these things over time, and this means being opportunistic with exploring. This is. I mean, let’s go back to having younger friends. You get to be exposed to things you didn’t know were out there to do. But I think we need to be having hobbies. People say hobbies as though they’re like things that don’t matter sometimes, but they’re part of figuring out the things that give us joy in our lives. And I think we so often decide that work is an activity that is a worthy activity, and the rest of the stuff is just wasting time.

Dawn Carr [00:57:31]:
But that’s not at all. I mean, there are plenty of cultures. If we were to require you to only work 20 hours a week from now on, and you could work as hard as you wanted for 20 hours and use the rest of the time to do other things, people might invest differently in their lives, but they somehow think, I have a pre pass to decide. That’s one activity I can figure out how to be good at and that everything else doesn’t matter. And we miss out on life when we set those things down. So they like, oh, the two weeks I get a vacation, I’m going to cram in some things. But there’s never the ability to sort of habitually figure out what things kind of work well for us. And we have to actually make space in our schedule for those things.

Dawn Carr [00:58:12]:
Maybe we’re making space for people, but we also need to be making space for activities. I feel like you got to invest in those things over time to really figure out what’s worth it.

Wes Moss [00:58:25]:
A couple, just quick, almost like a lightning round opinion of work, technically, if you’re in retirement.

Dawn Carr [00:58:31]:
My opinion of work in retirement is that it’s a wonderful thing, and I think it’s very much dependent on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. But the autonomy to walk away and the autonomy to choose something that gives you joy and gives you a sense of meaning in some form or another, whether it’s just being around people on a regular basis or solving problems or learning new things. I think post retirement work is something that benefits lots of people. Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:59:09]:
How many close connections friends should you have at any given time?

Dawn Carr [00:59:13]:
I think that we have different levels of friendships. We have acquaintances, we have friends that we would invite to a party, but not necessarily share all of our deepest secrets with. And we have these deep, very rigidly close friendships. I’ll say that of the extreme, these super close friendships, I think the super close friendships. We need a minimum of two. I think the peripheral ones, we probably need a minimum of five. And the rest are your friends at the grocery store. We need those two.

Wes Moss [00:59:47]:
Okay, I’m gonna leave it there. Dawn, thank you so much.

Dawn Carr [00:59:51]:
All right.

Mallory Boggs [00:59:53]:
Hey y’all, this is Mallory with the retire sooner team. Please be sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. If you have any questions, you can find us@westmoss.com that’s wesmoss.com. you can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube. You’ll find us under the Handle Retire Sooner podcast. And now for our show disclosure this information is provided to you as a resource for informational purposes only and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. There is no guaranteed offer that investment return, yield, or performance will be achieved.

Mallory Boggs [01:00:28]:
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Mallory Boggs [01:01:14]:
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