#229 – Retire Without Regrets: A Harvard Business Review Longitudinal Study

Wes Moss [00:01:21]:
They’re famous for their. They’re famous. And the reason I know they’re good at long term studies and the reason I know they’re good at longitudinal studies many years is the well known Harvard Study of Adult Development. They started it back in 1938. It’s one of the longest running studies on happiness and wellbeing that we’ve ever seen in the history of America. And researchers followed two very different groups and they followed two very different groups of men over the course of 80 some odd years. And I think that they’re continuing to do this, but I think when I first read this, they’d already been running for 80 years. One of them was a group of Harvard grads or Harvard sophomores, and the other was a group of boys from Boston’s inner city.

Wes Moss [00:02:21]:
So they’re both from Boston, one’s from the inner city, one’s from Harvard. Then they tracked them their entire lives and they continue this on a rolling basis to see what really impacted their well being. Two very different, two arguably very different education levels, very different socioeconomic groups. But their ultimate happiness, whether they’re from one group or another, all came down to the same thing. And it was really about relationships. Relationships were the precursor and the predictor of a happy healthy life. The quality of relationships more than anything, more than fame or recognition or whether they’re sea level executives, iq, anything was the most predict was the. Was by far the most reliable predictor of whether they had true well being in their life and life satisfaction.

Wes Moss [00:03:24]:
So we know Harvard does Long term studies and in other, so we know Harvard does really long term studies. So we know Harvard, so we know Harvard does really long term studies. Done lots of research over the past decade or so. But what I love about the type, what I love about their most recent publication called Retire without Regrets is they followed a group of retirees systematic they followed a group of retirees systematically, I guess you could say over and over and over again for an entire decade. So they were able to see how they were planning for retirement and then how that retirement came to fruition or not. So as you can imagine, this study, Retire Without Regrets set out something similar to the adult, something similar to, something similar to their study of adult, something similar to their study of adult development in this case, really kind of the development of the happy retiree. And they wanted to see what the keys were to a fulfilling retirement. And they got to observe how this group that they followed were able to transition from working career life to not working.

Wes Moss [00:05:03]:
Now they call it Retire without regrets. I just call it a purpose filled happy retirement. Now as far as the study is concerned, it went for over a decade. They looked at two different groups. First was a larger group of 106 different participants. They interviewed them pre retirement. Then they interviewed them post retirement from across multiple, from across multiple industries, multiple geographies around the U.S. the second group, which is a smaller group of 14 participants, allowed the researchers to get even more in depth, conduct multiple multiple interviews year after year, intensive again longitudinal study of folks who were transitioning into retirement.

Wes Moss [00:06:09]:
So you’ve got a pretty decent sized group of these. You’ve a pretty decent, you have a pretty decent sized group, this 106 or so where they essentially tried to map what they thought retirement was going to be and then several years into retirement what it was actually like. And then a more select group that they followed and they followed up with seems like all the time. And they really got a feel for their pre retirement year, their pre retire, their pre retirement years, what they thought retirement would be like and then what, what it actually was like. So if you were conducting a study or so, a lot of what they did, I, so, so the way they went about it I think makes a lot of sense. They had them sit down before retirement and say how do you think you’re going to handle retirement? What do you think you want to do? What’s the structure look like? Who are you going to go see? Where are you going to live? Let’s just talk about it and give us an idea of what you’re thinking it’s going to be. And in the smaller, more intimate group, they had them map out, literally draw out in paper and pencil, paper and colored pencil. Paper and colored pencils.

Wes Moss [00:07:50]:
Draw us would draw out what you think life will look like. Use stick figures, shapes, hearts, houses. Draw little icons out about the hobbies you think you might want to do, the people you want to be with. How are you going to spend your time? So that they’re drawing out little so that they’re drawing out. I’d call this as life mapping their ideal future life structure. And then as time went on, the researchers were able to figure out, hey, did what this group wanted to have happen or this individual wanted to have happen or thought what happened actually come to fruition? And through this process, through this 10 year plus study, they came up with a framework that if followed, explains why the group that really lived out what they wanted, lived out their wonderful retirement, lived out their retirement dreams. What’s that? Regret. Or in their case, lived their life without regret.

Wes Moss [00:09:35]:
They followed this framework and they got this and they got the following four steps. Again, Harvard came up with this, not me, and they got it right. Now, again, I’d probably name these all very differently and it took me a little while to understand exactly what they were saying. But I’m going to explain it here on today’s episode because I really, even though this approach is a little different than I’ve done over the years, I think it’s a really refreshing, smart way to look at it. So here are the four steps that they came up with in their long term study. Alignment Awareness Agency, which I had to look up exactly how they were using that word and of course adapt it and adaptability, they call it the four A’s. So it’s their framework to try to set yourself up to a healthy transition again, so there’s no regrets, AKA a happy retirement. So here’s the punchline of the study.

Wes Moss [00:10:48]:
It shows one success story, which is kind of how I would envision an amazing retirement. And then one disaster story from the group of 14 that they intimately followed Irene. And they don’t give any last names, but they give these. They don’t give any last, so they don’t give any last names. But they do talk about Irene who seems to nail retirement life 10 out of 10. And Lawrence is on the other side of the spectrum and he literally ends up lonely in rehab. Now here’s what I think made this so interesting to me and that’s this physically drawn life map, Life roadmap whatever you would call sitting down for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, and drawing out what you think you’re like, what you think you would like your life to look like. Now, I did this for the better part of my career, I’ve been drawing out by hand, financial roadmaps, financial plans.

Wes Moss [00:12:08]:
I used to use different color highlighters then different color markers. Now I use one of these digital pads that has different colors so that I can really help visualize and just customize what life can look like from a financial perspective. So think. Think this out. So think of it as drawing out a line that goes to the left. So just as some. So think about it. So think about drawing a line from the left to the right.

Wes Moss [00:12:46]:
Different years today, versus 5 years and 10 years and 15 years. Maybe when a mortgage gets paid off, maybe when an income stream kicks in, maybe when the kids are out of college, what your savings level looks like today, what it might look like if you add a certain amount per year, certain rate of return. And that all maps out over time. And to me, that’s a little bit like a financial blueprint. And I’ve used that and developed that and done hundreds and hundreds of these roadmaps, and they’ve really changed over the years. But what I’ve also noticed in the last call at five years or so is a lot of the families that I’ve worked with and helped do their planning, they’ve kind of they, to a large extent, because they’ve been investing now for maybe 10 or 20 years with me, but 10 or 20 years before that, the money side of things is beyond what they ever even thought. They’ve saved more. Their investments have grown beyond what they had originally planned for.

Wes Moss [00:14:04]:
So now they’re thinking less about just the financial checkpoints and more about what life with all of this money is going to look like. And that’s where the Harvard study really starts. It doesn’t ask to draw out your savings and what you think your savings might be. They just said, hey, Lawrence, sit down and draw us a roadmap of what do you think life should look like over the next year or two? Irene, physically draw out what you just take it out. You don’t have to be a great artist. Just draw out what you think life is going to look like. So what did Irene do? She drew a cool little sketch of what looks kind of like a coastline, a little bit like the United States. But I think it kind of represented where she wanted to move, just the Cape Cod area.

Wes Moss [00:14:58]:
She wanted to move to the coast. So there was this seemingly group, this seemingly part that was the land and then beyond that was the coastline. And in the upper left hand corner there’s a little picture of a house, but it was labeled as the library where she thought she might want to volunteer. There’s a little picture of somebody doing art, stick figure doing art. Then a little icon that looked like walking down the beach labeled conservation volunteering for the coastline. And then it had friends to the north, south, east and west and little hearts around family. And said, I want to visit Brian and Ann. I can’t remember exactly.

Wes Moss [00:15:55]:
I want to visit Ryan and Caitlin. I want to visit Jim and Suzanne. Then it had a stick figure. I guess it was Irene in her own mind doing some sort of other activity, staying active. And it looked like there was a lot of not just thought that went into it, but a lot of diversity of activity. Looked like there’s a lot of things she was looking to do or looking to structure her Days, weeks and months with and for just this little sketch look pretty good to me. Now, on the other hand, and I’d say the artistic part of both subjects here, Irene and Lawrence pretty much the same. They’re both pretty decent at some little stick figures and drawing out whether it’s a bubble for family, a heart for friends, a little house icon, which is kind of easy to draw, but Lawrence’s sketch, But Lawrence’s sketch looked just a little emptier.

Wes Moss [00:17:43]:
It’s kind of this big pie chart. And almost half of the pie chart was visiting son and taking care of grandson. Both very noble pursuits. Both very noble pursuits. There’s a phrase over to the right that said maybe do some volunteering. Another bubble offshoot to the main chart. Chores, paying bills, managing money. By the way, we haven’t even answered, by the way, we haven’t even talked about the money side of this.

Wes Moss [00:18:21]:
And the Harvard study doesn’t give any exact figures, but I get the sense that they were both financially in an equivalent space. Both had plenty of money to do what they wanted to do. I didn’t get the sense that either was some mega millions outlier, but both had enough to be able to afford retirement. We’ll come back to the drawings in a minute. Here are the four areas that the HBR study retire without. The HBR study tells us we need to get ahold of. And the first one is alignment. The second one is awareness.

Wes Moss [00:19:17]:
The third, agency. And the fourth, adaptability. What’s alignment? So we’ll start with alignment. So we’ll start with alignment, which Essential. So we’ll start with alignment, which essentially means you want to create a day to day retirement life that fits you, your current values and your interests and your relationships and your relationships and your motivations. Essentially you want to fit between who you are and how you spend your time. So for example, Irene ended up by the ocean. In her head, she said, I, she thought, I want to, I think I want to live up there on the coast or near the coast.

Wes Moss [00:20:01]:
She drew it out in her picture because she wanted to be part of ocean conservation. She wanted to be part of a town that was near the water. She wanted to be closer to family. And in figuring that out, figuring out what that alignment is, it helped her just feel at ease when she was in retirement. One part of your brain is not disconnected from what you’re actually doing. In her mind, she wanted to be near or closer to nature. She wanted to be in a community. And that’s really where she ended up.

Wes Moss [00:21:25]:
Alignment. Now, I think for alignment it takes number two, which is awareness. And I think awareness comes down to maybe being just honest with yourself or being introspective around what you, what that self identity really is deep inside. And I think that’s why these exercises, although they might seem like they might seem a little bit silly and life mapping might seem, seem a little silly. It makes you think, it makes you brainstorm about what you already like, what maybe doesn’t fit and maybe what you would like to implement. And that’s my experience. As you draw things out, it gives you an awareness of what kind of, it gives you an awareness of where your self identity is and where you’d like to take it. And I think it also helps with figuring out where you are misaligned.

Wes Moss [00:23:08]:
Hey, I wrote down all these things over here. And I want to be part of nature and I want to be part of a community, but I live somewhere else. That just doesn’t lend itself to that. Wait a minute, I’m misaligned. So awareness, I think helps with that. Agency number three. Agency really is just making sure that you are aligned with, with your awareness of what you want to be. Yeah, no, yeah.

Wes Moss [00:23:53]:
Which brings us to agency number three. Agency is really just about taking control and making these proactive choices and all these and proactive and proactive decisions to create that alignment that we’re talking about or what Harvard’s talking about in step one. And it takes some work, it takes some ownership, it takes some productivity. It’s starting, it’s thinking about my, I’m aware that I’d like to do a new hobby that what I’d be, I’d be in a line with. But I’ve got to take the. I have to have the agency to actually join the club, get an instructor, start a group, join a group. If I want to be part of a new community or expand my community, I’ve got to do something to facilitate that. I’ve joined a volunteer group, I join a church, I take on a new role.

Wes Moss [00:25:02]:
And I think it takes a ton of work. You can’t just drop into a whole new life with a brand new schedule, brand new outlook, a brand new flood of time and think it’s just going to magically all fall into place. So I agree with what HBR is saying here, which is we’ve got to take a real level of agency. I would just call it ownership and proactivity in order to get aligned and get the alignment they’re talking about. So as an example, in Lawrence’s roadmap, he wrote down something like maybe volunteer or think about volunteering. It was a really kind of a wishy washy thought that didn’t have a whole lot behind it. And guess what? He never ended up doing any volunteering. So he’s kind of lukewarm on maybe I want to do it, but didn’t really map it out and then didn’t have the proactivity to make it happen.

Wes Moss [00:26:28]:
On the, on the flip side, think about what Irene did. She moved to Cape Cod, she joined the library as a volunteer, she joined the, she joined the conservancy for the shoreline. She took all these steps to really get integrated because she wanted to be part of the community. And it helped her. It helped take care of all those other pieces of structure she took. She took real ownership of it. Okay, good. Sorry.

Wes Moss [00:26:59]:
All right, number four is just adaptability. And again, I think that’d be on any list. It’s just on a list of, hey, being a human. We’re going to get thrown crazy curveballs when at every stage of our life. And I think particularly when we head to retirement, we’re not working anymore, we have less. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Wes Moss [00:27:25]:
All right, here you go. Okay. Number four, adaptability. Now, again, this is something we all have to have adaptability throughout the course of our lives. But I think it takes on an even higher, higher importance. But I think it takes on an even higher level of importance because we potentially have less things to fall back on if we’re working. If this doesn’t work out, we can do something else at work. We’ve got a big social network at work.

Wes Moss [00:28:05]:
If we have kids, they’re doing lots of different things. We have options. And if something doesn’t work out, sometimes we have this closer circuit board that we could jump to something new when we’re in retirement. And we lose a sense of purpose because of our work. We lose the structure of time with work, we lose our social network. The circuit board gets a little more spread out. So we’ve got to be able to be extra adaptable knowing that it’s going to be a challenging path to. It’s going to be, it’s going to be a challenging path to have all the things that we think we see in our head to manifest out into real life.

Wes Moss [00:28:49]:
And again I think it. And again I. And they’re going to be curveballs. They’re going to be curveballs along the way, particularly as we get older. So we put all those together, alignment and awareness and agency over both of those things. So we put them all together and we have alignment and awareness of what we’d really like to be doing and then take agency to make it all happen. Then of course be adaptable and then of course be willing to adapt as things don’t go exactly to plan. As an example on adaptability, when Lawrence, what happened with Lawrence’s grandson.

Wes Moss [00:29:46]:
And maybe I needed to come back to this anyway. Yeah. And this is where I wanted to come back to the Lawrence story that I promised earlier. Ultimately what happened, and this was an issue, I think there were some issues in a lot of these categories. But adaptability was a tough one because in his life plan, a big percentage, a big percentage of his time and purpose and structure was going to be around spending time and taking care of his grandson. Go live near your son who’s working and then be able to take care of the grandson. It was a big, big part of he and his wife’s long term retirement plan. Well, his son, the father of his grandson got divorced and then the mom got custody of the grandson.

Wes Moss [00:30:41]:
So not only did the dad not get to see the son as much, but neither did Lawrence. That whole big part of his pie chart, almost half of his retirement roadmap was just, it was just gone. Now he had really no control over. It wasn’t his fault that this happened, but it was such a big part of the plan that for him it was really hard to adapt. Then what happened? So he said then he had even less structure, he had more time on his hands. His casual or normal typical drinking habit got to be more and more dependent More and more dependent to the point where he ended up having a real issue, a real problem, and had to go into rehab. Now, in just a minute, I’m going to give you the. There are some rays of sunshine when it comes to Lawrence’s end of the end of the story, or at least we’ll fast forward a little bit because he did show some adaptability.

Wes Moss [00:31:59]:
Now, can you try this at home? I think certainly you can do your own version of a roadmap. And I think this is different than writing out New Year’s resolutions. It’s not just, hey, here’s what I want to accomplish. I think it’s this vision of what does life look like if I were to go out a year or two from now? What do I want to be doing? Who do I want to be spending my time with? What’s my structure in any given day look like? Where do I want to live? Where do I want to spend my time? Where do I want to travel? By the way, these seem like a lot of the habits of the happiest retiree. I did this exercise a. I did it myself, and I sat down with my dad and my step mom to do the same thing. Now, I could tell you in any given couple, it’s not every couple. Both are as excited to draw out with colored pencils this life roadmap a year or two from today.

Wes Moss [00:33:17]:
My dad was kind of in that camp, but he was open to it. He kind of smiled and said, okay. He’s like, I’ll do it. I’ll draw it out. My stepmom was kind of more excited about it. She was thinking, oh, it’d be fun to do some life planning. And we spent some time sitting down doing it, and I kind of coached them through. Okay, well, well, where do we start? I don’t know.

Wes Moss [00:33:38]:
Draw a circle. Draw a. Draw the state you live in, Draw the country. Draw a house. And then start layering in the things that are important to you. So what goes on the. What goes on the blueprint of the roadmap? Well, maybe it’s family, maybe it’s friends, maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s kids, grandkids, and maybe they’re all over the place.

Wes Moss [00:34:04]:
And then you layer in your core pursuits. What are the fun things? Your hobbies on steroids, as Joe Saul Sehi from Stacking Benjamins would call them, super activities. They need to go into your roadmap. And then I like to put in, well, how often do you want to go see the grandkids? Is it Once a year? Is it twice a year? Well, my dad put down three, three times a year. My stepmom, who’s a big. Is a big horse rider. My stepmom, who rides horses, it’s a huge part of her life. She wrote down that during the weekdays she wants to be training two hours a day.

Wes Moss [00:35:00]:
She does something called dressage. You may be seen in the Olympics. Hard to even explain how these, how these horses move. It’s kind of. It’s a, kind of a fascinating sport. But also she judges that and she’s a high level judge for dressage. So that’s another one of her super activities, core pursuits. But they went on to map out and draw out a bunch of a long list.

Wes Moss [00:35:33]:
And my dad did it in this big circle. He called it the circle of life with all these arrows, all these different pastimes and super activities and cycling. But then thinking, wait a minute, how many times a week do I want to do this? And is that all you want to do? Oh, well, you know, I forgot I wanted to get an E bike because I’ve got one of my knees is better. Oh, and I’d like to get my knee better. And his list included music and his band and how often he wanted to do that and riding horses and how often he wanted to do that and reconnecting with colleagues and going back to work one day a week. He misses veterinary surgery too much. Write a book is in here. Even listed the kind of book he wanted to write.

Wes Moss [00:36:24]:
He mentioned a category. I didn’t really know exactly what it was. He calls them adventures. And guess what? So did my stepmom. She wrote down more adventures. And they look at adventures as cowboy reenactments. They do these staged train robberies for audiences and I don’t know the occasions, but I think it’s a couple times a year and a variety of other cowboy activities for whatever. For whatever that might be.

Wes Moss [00:37:06]:
But they count them as adventures. And the cool thing about doing this as a couple is as you’re reading them out, hopefully there’s some overlap. And they said, oh, I listed it. I listed I want to do one adventure a month. And so I listed it. I want. So it’s cool to find some common ground too, because we’re not going to do. We’re not going to do everything together.

Wes Moss [00:37:32]:
And some couples do not a whole lot together, but it makes sense that you’d want some overlap. So it’s an exercise that I think we can do. So it’s an exercise you can do at home. You don’t need a Harvard researcher looking at you through a one way glass mirror with a clipboard and a pen. This is something that you can sit down and do with your spouse, do with your partner. And in my case, you would do it with your financial advisor. And I think it’s a cool thing to do. It’s not for everyone, and not everybody wants to spend this much time in introspection and thinking about where you’re headed and what life should look like in a year or two from now.

Wes Moss [00:38:36]:
But retirement can be a tough transition. It’s hard for a lot of folks. And I just. And I think this is a really good exercise and a good way to think about it and a good tool to lower the probability that the transition’s that rough. I think we’re getting almost done. Yeah. Do you want to say something about the four steps? Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:39:01]:
Okay. So then we got. I have like, I gave, I guess I did an align. I, I did a quick how Irene used each four and Lawrence didn’t use each four. Or is that kind of overkill? Yeah, it’s overkill. I have a good bottom line. Okay. I’m going to do a bottom line for Irene.

Wes Moss [00:39:27]:
Bottom line for Lawrence. That’s very good to have you. So let’s get, let’s go to the bottom line for Irene, who I kind of want to be Irene when I’m in retirement. She took time to build a life that really fit her values and really fit her interests, even geographically. She figured out a way for her days, literally her schedule, to revolve around what really mattered to her. It was spending time with her family, diving into her creative pursuits like art classes, gardening, connecting with nature, joining this coastal conservation group, working at the library. So she, so she had this really nice mix of painting and beach walks and conservation work and put that all together. She ended up with, she ended up with this cool rhythm that kept her energized and kept her engaged.

Wes Moss [00:40:48]:
So her retirement ended up feeling just as rewarding as her career had been. Now Lawrence, on the other hand, and this is where we’ll get to the end of his story. His was a much tougher path. His big overarching plan didn’t have a lot of concrete areas to explore. One of the big parts of it kind of got unexpectedly taken away and he ended up in a pretty dark place. But that dark place ultimately led him to a place of purpose. So he hits rock bottom, he checks into rehab, but that in itself set him on a new course. He became, he began A new journey of recovery.

Wes Moss [00:41:56]:
And he got sober and he ended up meeting all these people that did the same thing. He ended up with this recovery community with lots of meaningful relationships. It was a sober community and a group of folks that he never, ever would have connected with otherwise. Then his purpose became helping others in their own recovery, in their own recovery. And that really, that really woke something up inside of him that gave him a new sense of purpose, that gave him a community. And then his community flourished from there. Then his socialization blossomed from there. So his road wasn’t easy.

Wes Moss [00:42:52]:
And ultimately he was almost forced to take control and forced to get some agency over his life. And when he finally committed to doing it worked. He ended up finding the rewarding retirement, even though it was a really tough path that he’d been searching for all along. And I think here’s the bottom line for all of us. A purpose filled, wonderful retirement. It doesn’t just fall out of the sky. It doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to draw the map out yourself.

Wes Moss [00:43:31]:
What HBR does here is out. What HBR I think is doing here. It’s very similar to how, what we think about here on the podcast, helping families find happiness in retirement. There’s a lot to it. So we’ve got to start by aligning our life around the things that matter, whether it’s family or hobbies or giving back. But you’ve got to get that alignment. Then you got to build awareness of your current lifestyle and where you might need more balance or need more conduct or meet or need more connection. And then take action to shape, then take action to shape your days with intention.

Wes Moss [00:44:22]:
So having the alignment of what matters to you and the awareness of actually doing so means you have agency, means you have control over your retirement phase of life. And that’s all about being proactive in retirement as opposed to being passive. And of course, we’ve all got to stay highly adaptable to whatever life throws at us. And Lawrence is a and finally. And Lawrence, I think, is a and finally. And I think Lawrence is a great example of this ultimately about adaptability. We’ve got to be adaptable to what life throws at us. So that’s the four A’s.

Wes Moss [00:45:09]:
That’s Harvard’s version. That’s Harvard’s version of how to have a happy retirement. They call it a retirement without regret. So like Harvard, I call it happy retirement. They called a retirement without regret, but I think it works and I love it. Or you could simply just read what the happiest retirees know, I think more than anything, maybe you end up just drawing. Getting out the colored pencils and a sheet of paper, which I was lucky enough to have right on my desk because of one of my kids doing a school project. And map it out.

Wes Moss [00:45:52]:
And my heart. Well, Mallory’s heart and my heart both would probably melt if you were to email us those pictures that you draw out.