Lewis Carroll started Alice’s journey into Wonderland by having her fall down a rabbit hole. Maybe you’ve gone down one of these yourself: found yourself in a complex and frustrating situation you hadn’t imagined when you took a simple wrong step.
For instance, have you ever worked on what you thought was a simple home remodeling project and found it to be more complex and expensive than you’d imagined? Or maybe you simply got sucked into watching a series of YouTube videos that took you barreling through multiple topics far afield of the one you started with. Politics these days offers another rabbit hole—when people follow complex theories about the validity of the presidential election, for instance, or the speed and delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine or the stimulus payments, or when they get pulled into the theories and ideas from either the so-called far left or far right.
The never-ending stream of information about these topics can amp people up with anger and resentment, cause spouses and even families to stop talking to one another, put undue stress on their health and well-being, and cause isolation. Which, in turn, creates more time and space for them to consume more information.
And finally, your clients’ retirement can also make them feel as disoriented as Alice after her fall. For instance, they might have started the process of taking a regular IRA distribution and found they’d started a chain reaction that affected their income taxes, health-care subsidies and Social Security benefits. One thing simply led to another; suddenly, they are falling, landing in a confusing place they aren’t prepared to navigate. Or maybe they’re dealing with an adult child who can’t launch or is recently divorced, and whose financial problems suddenly become their own.
Clients might not anticipate or even realize they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole until it’s already happened. They aren’t necessarily going to fall as hard or fast as Alice did. Sometimes it’s a slower process.
Most financial professionals can help clients work through the dollars and cents in these situations, but advisors are often less helpful with clients’ personal issues—their routines, health, quality of life and relationships with adult children, even though these things can also quickly be thrown into disarray during somebody’s retirement.
Very few clients will foresee these pitfalls, let alone prepare for them. Most of them are preoccupied instead with their fear of exhausting their money or losing their current lifestyle, as one study by Charles Schwab shows. They haven’t really been told that there are other non-financial aspects of later life to worry about.
Over the last 10 years, I have gathered a variety of empirical data from my “Naked Retirement” workshops and classes. I found that you learn a lot about people when their financial worries are removed. Their biggest retirement fears then revolve around losing loved ones, losing their identity and staying connected. Running out of money pales in comparison to running out of family, friends, good health and time.
All of these things play a big role in how well people adapt to life after work.
What’s important for advisors is to be willing to open up the dialogue about the more personal aspects of retirement—to make clients aware of the rabbit holes before they fall into them.
To help, advisors need to expand their own current skill sets with additional tools (and licensing, if necessary) and help their clients develop more personal connections and non-financial plans. Two guides I’ve written, The Real Retirement Crisis and 7 Retirement Questions You’re Afraid To Ask, are designed to help advisors anticipate these dilemmas. The guides are short and concise (10 to 12 pages). They don’t tell clients how to solve all their problems, but simply point out that retirement isn’t always an easy transition where everything goes as planned. For example, some people after retirement run into these problems:
• They may lose their sense of purpose and not want to get out of bed.
• They don’t feel like the same people they were before.
• They feel out of sync with their spouses.
• They realize that working part time wasn’t a good idea.
• They don’t follow through on the new things they want to do.
• They struggle with saying “no” to adult children.
• They gain weight.
• They watch too much TV.
The list could go on.
It’s awkward bringing these subjects up at meetings without the right introduction and process. Whether or not you feel comfortable with a more personal touch, however, you can deliver this information in more comfortable ways: by e-mailing it to clients, including it in a newsletter or webinar or by handing it to them at the end of your meetings.
They key to all of this is awareness. I’m not advocating for therapy or even counseling. Instead, I’m pointing out that when this stuff happens, and some of it inevitably will, clients should know they have resources and a support person in you whom they can turn to and trust.
In addition to raising awareness through content, you can fall back on your experience. Right now, the average age of advisors is hovering around 55, and most of you already have more than 20 years’ experience. So you have likely already seen clients go through challenging personal times and learned a thing or two about dealing with them. That knowledge is not only important to share with younger or less experienced advisors, but also to share with clients.
We all know that people love a good story. So use your client experiences to your business advantage. Write down a list of the 10 craziest situations you have come across and how they panned out. You will obviously need to change clients’ names. And it’s OK to blend stories so clients can’t identify themselves in the content. Taking the time to do this can be both rewarding for you as well as new and existing clients.
I actually used many client experiences for a fictional book called Crossroads of Retirement. I bring this up to illustrate the point that you really can have fun with what you know. It doesn’t have to be hard or ugly, and clients need to know that a successful retirement isn’t one without problems but a time in which they learn to overcome them.
People who run into rabbit holes didn’t always start out with daunting or scary problems. When Alice fell, she thought she was following a rabbit to a party. Clients, too, think grand things will take place after their own retirement party, and it’s our job to let them know there may be a Queen of Hearts or two lurking and waiting to disrupt things.
If you would like a copy of any of the guides mentioned, please feel free to e-mail me.
Robert Laura is a best-selling author, nationally syndicated columnist and president of Wealth & Wellness Group. He is a seasoned conference speaker, corporate trainer and pioneer in “The New Era Of Retirement” which focuses on the non-financial aspects of life after work. He can be reached at [email protected].