Let me ask you, “What does retirement really look and feel like?” In a recent series of e-mails and social media posts, I decided to push the limits by answering this question in a disturbing light. There were four images, including a man holding a gun to his head as he screamed out loud. Another was of a distraught businessman who seems indecisive and overwhelmed. Then there was a woman pulling on her hair in anguish and deep-set pain. And finally, there’s a picture of a guy who seems mad at the world and is giving life a thumbs-down.

Can you imagine what clients would think or say if you handed them a retirement planning brochure that had these negative images? I can hear the conversation now:

“John and Mary, I am so excited about your plans to retire this year. I know you guys have both been working hard to get here. In order to help you with this transition, we have a new booklet we give our clients. It’s called The Real Faces of Retirement.”

As I hand them the brochure, John smirks as Mary gasps. 

John says, “Is this some sort of joke?”

“No,” I reply, “It’s the stuff no one ever tells people about retirement,” adding, “Truth is, a growing number of people choose to kill themselves after age 65. They lose purpose and direction and feel it’s the only way out.”

Then I turn the page, “Same with some other mental health issues like depression and addiction. People go into retirement thinking life will be easy and they will automatically adapt, but some quickly realize it’s not what they expected it to be. They are alone, disconnected, feel irrelevant, and like they have been put out to pasture. It’s sad but they don’t have a place or role anymore. It’s one reason we feel investing in drug companies is a good long-term investment theme.”

Now Mary is sitting there with her hand over her mouth, not knowing what to say, as John is rubbing his forehead trying to take it all in.

Turning the page again, I say, “And then we still have to factor in other challenges like adult children and the havoc they can cause. Plus, there’s the likelihood of cancer, Alzheimer’s, dementia, heart disease or stroke robbing you of precious years and activities.” 

Then I wrap up the conversation by saying, “The good news is, you have enough money to retire but it won’t necessarily help you with any of this other stuff.”

I don’t know that any advisor using an approach like this would end up with very many new clients, simply because everyone would be petrified to retire. It’s bad enough that much of traditional retirement planning uses fear to make people feel that they will be homeless and a burden to others if they don’t save a certain amount of money. So how do we raise awareness around the topics that nobody wants to talk about but can definitely show up in retirement? 

One of the things I have continually said is that we need to “vaccinate” clients for retirement. In other words, just as a flu shot injects a small amount of something negative into the body so that it begins to build up some defenses around it, we have to do the same thing with retirement planning. Insert some of these negative thoughts, feelings and situations that can come up so that when people get there, they can recognize them and fight back.

But saying we need to do this and actually doing it are two different things. It’s one reason I recently developed a new program called The Crossroads of Retirement.  For lack of a better term, it’s basically a retirement soap opera that’s designed to draw people in as I highlight issues that can disrupt a client’s retirement. The factors include the impact of a sudden retirement, the challenges clients face with adult children during retirement, the mental health issues like depression and addiction clients face, as well as the issues of fraud, cancer, ageism and more. 

I’m sharing this because this approach is completely out-of-the-box and critically important for us to start changing the retirement conversation. It’s an opportunity to bridge and blend financial conversations with the more personal aspects of life in retirement. It’s the element that has been missing from our industry as we look to fuse the hard side of retirement planning with the softer side. Furthermore, it helps us avoid pulling out that terrible brochure I mentioned earlier. 

As you will see, the series follows an uncanny retirement planner who uses his background as a psychologist to help clients navigate the aspects of retirement that few people ever talk about, let alone plan for. It’s designed to point out many of the fatal flaws of traditional retirement planning and to captivate clients with the emotional chaos that takes place in each episode. I liken the series to a car crash on the highway. As you drive by, you don’t want to look, but you can’t help wanting to slow down and see what is going on. 

Another major goal of the program was to highlight the significant role advisors play in clients’ lives. Therefore, it offers an insider’s look at the laundry list of things that clients can throw at us at any given time, and how they turn to us in some of the stickiest of situations. 

Something else that is crucial to the future of advisors came out of the launch. It isn’t enough to just come up with new and creative approaches. We also have to look at how we are delivering the content. When I developed the Crossroads of Retirement program, I decided to launch it as both an e-mail series as well as a podcast. It was my first foray into podcasting, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I have been blown away by the results. By a 4-to-1 ratio, people are opting for the podcast over the written e-mail series.

Don’t get me wrong, I was aware of podcasts and their popularity, but that’s a major discrepancy I wasn’t prepared for. For advisors, what it illustrates is that people are not only looking for new ways to consume retirement information but that we must also use things like Adult Learning Theory to provide it.

As you may know, people tend to prefer one style of learning over another. Some are visual and prefer to learn by reading or watching videos. Others are auditory and prefer to learn by listening, and yet others are kinesthetic and prefer to learn by doing.

In other words, if we want to send a new message about retirement planning that emphasizes the need to look at both the financial and personal sides of it, we have to do it in multiple ways. That means advisors not only need to develop new and better soft skills, but also enhance their media skills in terms of writing, video and podcasts.

In the scope of this article, it can sound like a lot of things to do, but it’s really about letting the true spirit of retirement shape all of us. The ability to effectively prepare a client to make a successful transition from work life to home life is taking on new meaning. We can no longer give clients permission to leave work if they don’t have a plan to replace the things that it provides for them, even if they have enough money to do so. 

The fact is, the face of retirement isn’t changing! It already has. As an industry we need to be prepared to adapt as money and the personal aspects of life become more intertwined than ever before. We need to work together to develop and share tools and resources that vaccinate clients and make them stronger for the transition.

Robert Laura is the president of SYNERGOS Financial Group, the founder of RetirementProject.org and pioneer in Certified Retirement Coach training. He can be reached at [email protected].