The Arsenal Money Clip Podcast

The Psychology Behind a Fulfilling Retirement: A Conversation With Dr. Carol Perlman

• Arsenal Financial • Episode 14

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Arsenal Financial advisors Doug Orifice and Jeremy Vaille are trying really, really hard to make a listenable podcast about money and finance. In this episode they welcome psychologist Dr. Carol Perlman on to talk about preparing for retirement with practical tools for routine and constructing positive narratives and identity that help you thrive, not just stop working. Take a listen to hear about:

  • Why retirement psychology matters  
  • How to control identity, purpose, and routine shifts  
  • The importance of time management and weekly planning
  • How to choose the narratives that help you
  • The four buckets to plan time for: productive, social, health, meaning
  • How to address spending-from-the-pile anxiety
  • Semi-retirement as an alternative
  • Then finish up with some mom jokes from Jeremy

Connect with Dr. Carol Perlman at carolperlman.com or on Instagram and take a listen to the Healthy Habits for Life podcast.

Find Doug, Jeremy, and Arsenal Financial at arsenalfinancial.com or call (781) 335-9100.

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener’s personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.

Doug: 0:03

All right, and welcome to yet another episode here of the Arsenal Money Clip after our enormous one-month summer break. JV, we're back. How are you feeling?

Jeremy: 0:15

Did we have a break? I don't remember a break. 

Doug: 0:17

We kind of had a break. It didn't feel like it. Hey folks, my name is Doug Orifice here with my partner, Jeremy Vaille. For you first timers listening, we run a financial planning and investment management firm in Massachusetts called Arsenal Financial with locations in Watertown, Mass and down on the South Shore in Norwell, Massachusetts. Our goal here, not to be famous, is to have a listenable experience talking about money, and listening about money, and hopefully we can be helpful along the way and have a finance podcast strike you with some real life problems. We're really lucky today that we have a guest and we can dig really deep into the retirement psychology game, right. The psychology of retirement. So really, really psyched to introduce one, Carol Perlman. Hey Carol, how are you?

Carol: 1:03

Hi, great, great to be here.

Doug: 1:05

Thanks for joining us. So, Carol, you tell us you're a cognitive behavioral therapist. We have you here to talk a lot about the crossroad between psychology and retirement. So thanks so much for being here. You're also a fellow, like I shouldn't say a fellow podcaster, you're a veteran podcaster. Jeremy and I just do this as kind of like a side gig and a hobby, right. But if you wouldn't mind, could you just take a few minutes to introduce yourself and talk about your journey and maybe overlay some of your retirement psychology conversations in the mix?

Carol: 1:35

Yeah, for sure. I'm so excited to be here. I think this is a great conversation that needs to be happening more. And so I hope this can just be the beginning of our conversation, your conversation with your clients, and your clients' conversations with their families, significant others, friends, colleagues, and all that because it's so important. So we'll get to the why in a moment. But yes, I'm a psychologist in Massachusetts. I've been practicing for over two decades, 25 years now. And I've done the traditional psychologist work treating typical problems like anxiety and depression. But my true passion, my true calling is wellness, using my psychology background to help people with wellness. And habits, creating habits for productivity, taking care of yourself, creating health habits. It is not easy. And there are a lot of hacks that we can learn from the field of psychology that can make these goals feel much more doable. So I have been shifting my practice in the past 10 years or so from that traditional psychologist model to a little bit more of a coaching angle, helping people learn practical strategies for creating an optimal day where they learn to work more efficiently and free up more time for self-care and the things that are fun and enjoyable and relaxing, to overall create better work-life balance. And, you know, when we met, we got to talking that retirement comes up a lot with the clients that I work with, and it's been shocking to me to discover that a lot of people don't think about it in advance. They're thinking a lot about the money, and that's your job. So fortunately, many people know, okay, you're gonna need a pretty good amount of money to retire and have the lifestyle that you want. So fortunately, many people are working with planners for the financial side, but there's actually a lot to plan for emotionally and psychologically, and it's not happening. And so what really got my wheels spinning was working with different people in my practice who hit retirement from different industries. You know, some were teachers, some were in the business world, some had been stay-at-home parents, but then retirement hits and life does a 180. And when you're not prepared for that, it can be a really big shock, a really big change, and that adjustment can be really difficult. And so I've worked with people who kind of plummeted as they jumped into that transition in life, and we've tried to, you know, get back to a place of well-being. And it occurred to me that we can really prevent a lot of this by having the conversations, by doing the work in advance long before that retirement date arrives. We can really set people up to thrive in retirement, which we all deserve to after working really hard. Everybody deserves to thrive and have a great retirement, whatever that looks like. And so that is a new part of my practice is helping people focus on this transition to retirement, whether it's 10 years away, five years, one year, whether it's happening now, or whether it's been a few years and now you're realizing, yikes, this is not going so well, I need to make some adjustments. And so that's the work that I'm really excited to talk to you about today.

Doug: 4:43

Going to be a really interesting conversation. On the topics of psychology and preparedness, Jeremy went to school for engineering. I have a degree in finance. JV, were you surprised as you transitioned into this line of work years ago, how much psychology is involved in your day-to-day life?

Jeremy: 5:05

Oh my goodness. I had no clue what I was getting into. You know, and I tell clients even today, right. The math, we can figure out the math. That's not the hard part. The hard part is what Carol's here to talk about. It's that it's all the intangibles that come around the topic, right. Whether it's, you know, winding down from something you've done for 40 years and changing all the behaviors that you had for those years, or, you know, making sure that you have something to go to, something to do at the end of having a 40, 50, 60 hour a week job, right. So I would say that that was one of the biggest, I guess you could say, eye poppers to me, in coming into this business is how much of that is involved. And I would say it's the majority of it.

Doug: 5:48

Likewise, I'm lucky enough that once a year I go to an alumni event for the radio station I was involved with at Bentley College in Waltham. And it's great because I get to not just connect with friends of mine, but every single year I'm meeting kids who are still at Bentley. And it's kind of fascinating to see how some of their coursework has become more niche-oriented, whether it is, you know, the information technology of healthcare and overlaying a lot of the advances in AI and cloud computing and how that relates to business, right. But the reason I bring that up, you know, I had a lot of bright-eyed kids who are asking about what it's like to be middle-aged balding and in the real world, right. And I said, you know, if I knew then what I know now, I would have had some form of psychology minor or I would have gone to school for some sort of training psychology because Jeremy and I have had no choice but to kind of learn psychology on the fly. And I think we survive by just trying to be ourselves and just taking care of clients and listening and being empathetic. But sometimes that doesn't get us the whole way, right? Which is why we're really glad to have you here. 

Doug: 7:00 

And about a year ago, we did our first couple of podcast episodes, and I think this is our segway here. One of our first podcast episodes is called Retiring Is Hard. We focused on the fact that it's not always about the numbers. Jeremy and I talk about all the time this wiring that you have that, you know, my conversation at home lately is how my son, JV, you're gonna laugh because you know what I'm gonna bring up. How my son wants to start a landscaping business, even though he's never mowed a lawn in his life, right. I'm like, guy, you need some practice before you start a business. But you know, he's got his first couple of paychecks this year, right. So like he understands from this point forward what it's like to trade time for money. And everybody on the screen had a first job. All of our clients had a first job, or first time that they traded time for money, or got a job, or had a responsibility and got paid for it. And that just starts your journey of whatever, four, five, sometimes six decades of working, of exerting a certain amount of effort, of becoming really good at your craft, accumulating money, and then it's supposed to be okay when the record scratches and you stop. And you stop doing what you've learned and become really good at. Oh, and by the way, you fund yourself with your pile of money and nothing's coming in, right. Like that sounds, I think Jeremy and I had to like stop ourselves and talk through it to be like, man, that's hard. He and I haven't retired before. We've been on the other side of the conversation a million times, but man, like that is, that is really hard. So Carol, I guess the first thing, right. Like, yeah, retiring is hard. We'd love to hear about some of your conversations that rhyme with the retiring is hard and the record scratch of work, accumulate, save, to stop working, figure out something else to do, and then spend from the pile in order to make it work.

Carol: 8:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. When I think about the transition to retirement, what jumps out to me the most is the impact it's going to have on day-to-day routine. What is day-to-day life going to look like? I've heard people say the expression, it's Monday morning, now what? You know, you're used to waking up and you have people waiting for you and you have meetings to attend and things to do, and all of a sudden it's Monday morning and no one needs you. No one's expecting anything of you. And you look at your calendar and it's wide open. In fact, your whole week is wide open. What the heck are you going to do with yourself? And to be honest, this is really the heart of my business of the work I do with so many clients, because I really think so many parts of our life come down to time management. How do we use our time? How do we schedule out ourselves over the course of the week? And that has a ripple effect onto so many different parts of our life. 


Carol: 9:46

And so I think that's just one of the biggest adjustments is having nowhere to go, nobody waiting for you, and having to figure out what I am going to do with myself to make myself happy. And I don't think the goal is to work all those decades, all those hours to just fill the time and just kind of get through the day. There should be so much more, there can be so much more. Where there are things that you're excited about and that you're still doing meaningful things and creating meaningful experiences. And it's not just about filling the time. It's really about doing something special with that time as well. So that's the first thing that I think about is sort of the impact on the schedule. Related to that is sort of what I was alluding to is just the sense of purpose. You know, you have this identity. I've been this person, I've been a psychologist, I've been a financial planner, I've been a teacher, you know, I've been in a profession for all these years. And now I'm not doing that. So I'm still that person. But, you know, who am I now that I don't get to use those skills and that craft, like you said, that I've worked so hard on. So there's that identity shift that's also taking place.

Doug: 10:54

So I gotta tell you, one of my favorite things having this seat in this business is just being in a box seat for somebody's reinvention. Doesn't always happen from just before retirement, into retirement. You know, sometimes it was some sort of life catalyst that was unplanned, a loss of somebody, loss of a job, whatever it is. But man, like we just had a podcast which is about the hero's journey. And we get to watch our clients have these heroes' journey stories where it's just like they're going along and they're Frodo Baggins doing, you know, one thing and heading one way, and boom, they fall down a pit, life takes a turn, and then they reinvent themselves again and again and again. So it's one of the coolest things that Jeremy and I get to see.

Carol: 11:32

Yeah, that must be amazing to bear witness to.

Doug: 11:34

It is. It is. I mean, to bear witness and then actually be honored enough to sometimes be a part of it, right.

Jeremy: 11:40

Yeah. That's one of the real rewarding pieces of the job for sure. So, Carol, question for you. We get into the nitty-gritty. So you can say the majority of our clients fall into three buckets. Busy families, right, they got a million things going on at once. Small business owners. And then what we call our T minus tens. We've got less than 10 years to go before we launch the rocket and we're in retirement, right. We make it a big production. If there's one thing that you would kind of tactically give some advice on, if you're five or one year out, is there anything that you would kind of put at the top of your list?

Carol: 12:14

Yes. So I'm gonna back up with a short little snippet from a book that leads to my answer. So I like to read a lot of personal development books. So in our conversation, you'll probably hear me quote and reference different books. But there's this book that I read called The One Thing, written by Gary Keller, who, if you're in Massachusetts, you know Keller Williams Realty. So this is Gary Keller, the founder of that. And so in the book, he gives a lot of really great nuggets, business tips, personal development tips. But in almost every chapter, he asks the question: what's the one thing you could do such that everything in your life would be infinitely better? And you're waiting and waiting. Okay, what's the answer gonna be? I'm so excited for this really accomplished person to tell me what the answer is. And of course, what happens by the end of the book? He doesn't tell us the answer because we all have to figure out what that one thing is. So I read this, I think it was almost 10 years ago now. And I thought and I thought, what do I think that one thing is? And different people will have different answers. But where I landed with that was manage my time well. If I manage my time well, everything else is better. I can hit my fitness goals, I can hit my relationship goals, I can hit my business goals. Everything is better when you manage your time well. 

Carol: 13:26

And by manage your time well, what that means to me, is become really intentional with how you use your time. So that's what I think of in response to your question. If I was T minus 10, I would work on those skills of becoming really intentional about how I use my time. And what that means is creating the habit at least once a week of sitting down with a planner, whether you like paper, digital, doesn't matter, look at your whole week and map it all out with regards to all the things that are important. So what's happening business-wise to take care of your obligations and move your business goals forward? What's happening relationship-wise? So if it's important for you to have family time, are you creating time for that in the calendar? Do you actually see that in the calendar? If your health and fitness are really important to you, are you creating time for that? Do you know when you're gonna get to exercise, when you're going to the gym? For me, it's when am I playing tennis? I need to make sure that I have enough tennis plans in the calendar or I'm not gonna be happy with my week. So, friendships, if friendships are important and you look at your week, do you have time mapped out where you're gonna go visit with friends? So it's doing all of this in advance so that you can create the week to look exactly how you want it, to hit all the different important parts of your life that are really meaningful to you before it even happens. 

Carol: 14:44

And so you can then, once you have it all planned out, you can then take a step back, say, how does this look? Is it too much? Is it too little? Do I want to make some adjustments? And you can make it look perfect before it even happens. Of course, I have to put a little caveat in here to say it's not gonna execute exactly how you planned it out. So that's the first thing everyone always says to me. Yeah, great, I'm gonna have this perfect plan. And then, you know, something's gonna happen and the whole thing's gonna go out the window. And that's definitely true. Things are going to change in the course of the week, but I always say your net gain is going to be so much better if you have planned it out in advance. And even if things change and it doesn't go perfectly, your net gain will be so much better. So that's what I would recommend. T minus 10, get really good at being intentional with your time.

Jeremy: 15:28

So safe to say, you could be as busy entering your retirement years as before. You're just replacing that time with something more meaningful or more enjoyable, not that you're making money towards necessarily, but you fill in that time.

Carol: 15:42

Everybody's a little different. So I talk about, when I work with clients, I talk about the things that are scheduled and then the white space, the space in your calendar, something that doesn't have an event with a definite date and time. And so everybody's different in terms of how much white space they want to leave in their calendar. Some people like it all to be booked up. They want to know exactly what they're doing hour to hour. And some people really need a little more space to just kind of go with the flow, you know, see where they want to take their time and their activities. So I would say the same thing is true in retirement. I probably will be one of those people that plans out a lot in my week. My calendar is going to still be really full because that's just how I like to operate. But other people might say, you know what? And I've heard some of my clients have said this to me, if I have three things in the calendar, one productive task, one household organization task, and then one meal to cook, that's a great day for me. So everybody's different.

Doug: 16:37

I love that. JV, I'm doing a lot of visualizing in my head while I'm listening to Carol too. And I can't help but to think about the fruity pebbles. Everybody's like, what the hell's fruity pebbles, Doug? What are we talking about? Jeremy and I use the same CRM, of course. And everything that we have is color-coded, right. So if we get a really busy week, it's like, oh my God, look at the fruity pebbles. We got everything here. It's just we get a lot of green, we get some red, we get some yellow, but we often talk about our greens. There you go.

Jeremy: 17:08

Manual, manual pebbles. 

Doug: 17:10

Manual pebbles. I love it. But we often talk about our greens, and like our greens is when we have to be present, right. So like that's our client meetings have to be present. This is a green right now. You know, if I go to my workout class or whatever, that's a green. If I have to go drop my son off at practice, that's a green, right. If I'm meeting a friend for lunch, that's a green. So yeah, as you two talk, I'm like, when I'm done, I'm still gonna have greens. Like I gotta have some greens dictate my life.

Jeremy: 17:39

Your greens are different than mine. I gotta reevaluate my pebbles.

Doug: 17:42

That's you know, this would be part of 2026 Arsenal Financial business planning, you know. Section six, pebble organizing.

Doug: 17:52

All right, let's talk a little bit about our friends at JP Morgan Asset Management here. They have a ton of resources. If you're listening to this, feel free to go on to JP Morgan Asset Management, and you can see that they have a literally an everyday updated guide to the markets. They have a guide to fixed income. One that we like is one that's called Guide to Retirement, which is neat because it's got some stats on retirement for all kinds of different things. Most of them are, you know, retirement readiness, life expectancy, savings oriented, but there's a slide I'm looking at, and it says the percentage of the quote, reasons for retiring earlier than planned. So let's do a little top three here. JP Morgan Asset Management, their research says the number three reason somebody would retire earlier than planned is a health problem or disability. 31% chance. 

Doug: 18:44

By the way, these numbers are not gonna add up. It just means that some people have more than one of these factors. The number two reason for retiring earlier than planned, changes in your company, downsizing layoff. That is resonating big time now here in September 2025, where, you know, we're talking to an IT professional at least once a week who's rethinking what their T minus 10 looks like because the IT space is changing so fast right now. And, you know, one point a couple of years ago, there was 11 million open jobs, right. There's still millions of open jobs here in the US, but fewer and fewer every single day are IT jobs. The city of Seattle is changing before our eyes with the shifts in IT. So that's a big one. Number one though, number one reason, I was surprised to see this actually. Number one reason for retiring earlier than planned, you can afford to. 39%. Which means that, you know, of these top three, two are not choice related. One is of your own choosing. So Carol, as I kind of throw those reasons out there, like how does that resonate with you? Does that make you think of certain conversations? Are those numbers on point?

Carol: 19:58

Well, I have no idea if those numbers are on point, to be honest. I don't study that data on the regular, but what it makes me think about is the narrative of the transition to retirement and how important that is. And again, this is probably something people aren't thinking about. That, you know, we have that old narrative in our head of you work your butt off for all these years, and then you finally get to retirement, and theoretically, you have the money that you need to have some kind of retirement life. But as you're saying, how you transition to retirement may or may not look like you thought it would.

Doug: 20:35

100%.

Carol: 20:36

Like my sister is a teacher, and you know, teachers' world is very structured. There's a certain age at which they know they can retire, and as is true in many other fields. And then for other people, you know, I know someone who made a boatload of money in the industry and was able to retire at a really young age. So you don't really know, or it can be different for different people in terms of when and how you transition to retirement. But what I do know to be true is that the story you have in your head about how that goes down is going to be really important. And I think we would all agree that it would feel a lot better to have an age in your head to say, you know what, at 63, I'm going to retire because I will have enough and I'm going to make that choice and I'm going to plan on it, plan for it five to 10 years in advance. I'm going to know exactly what my retirement life is going to look like and I'm going to be in control. That would be really great. 

Carol: 21:24

But then you have all these people that you're referring to who got that notice at a time when they didn't realize it. And all of a sudden they're saying, you know what? I think I'm not going to get hired at this point. I thought I'd work for two more years, and retirement was just put on my lap, and now I have to figure it out. And I think unfortunately, that feels, in that scenario, that feels really terrible. I don't think it has to, but I think that's the experience of the individual, is that it doesn't feel great when that retirement decision is handed to you. So I think another important piece of work to do is to become aware that there's going to be a narrative about how and when you transition to retirement and to, again, work to create an intentional narrative. Even if you weren't in control, and even if that date was given to you, you can still turn that narrative around to something that is going to be more helpful for you.

Doug: 22:17

I think that's helpful for us, even as to how we frame this to clients, because, you know, part of financial planning is goal setting and then having a way that we can put the leads on the patient, do a stress test, and see if they're ready for X. But unfortunately, you know, like I've been doing this for 27 years. Not every retirement plan comes to fruition, right. But regardless, like I love what you're saying about that because it's at least important to have a bullseye and something to aim at. On the other side of the coin, I think one thing that Jeremy and I like that keeps us energized is, I'll say this line embrace the atypical. So I love that you mentioned the school teacher, right. Because if you are a teacher and you love teaching, you may do that for 30 years. And then when you feel like you've run out of gas and you are at or near your fully vested pension, you flip the switch, right. When I say embrace the atypical, you know, a good chunk of our practice is small business owners. And we often use the phrase lumpy income, income that doesn't come in on a sequential every two-week basis, a career arc that doesn't necessarily look like a school teacher or a municipal employee. You know, and that's difficult, but it's also fun too, right. And you're almost speaking in a language of flexibility the entire way because you have to be, right. So we tell people that we have to have a take and a philosophy. So it's like we have to have a take and a philosophy that if we, you know, if we're planning a retirement analysis, there's no point in us doing this around disorder and chaos in the markets, right. Because then all bets are off. But let's assume there's stability enough on the market that the markets function. Yes, there's going to be bull markets, bear markets, instability at times, but we need to have a take that we're walking on some sort of stable ground over time to get from point A to point B. I think one of those takes, too, is to have like these targets, which is like, okay, we have a bullseye to aim at it, may or may not work out, but like let's have a base case, right.

Carol: 24:19

Can I provide some alternative language for this idea of the take that I think will be really helpful?

Doug: 24:23

Please, yeah.

Carol: 24:24

So again, back to the T minus 10 group, what can you be doing now to set yourself up to thrive in retirement, is to learn mindset strategies. And this is relevant to all parts of life, that we all have thoughts. We have a bazillion thoughts that go through our mind throughout every day. And depending on what those thoughts are, we're going to feel differently. And then depending on our feelings, we're going to behave differently. And all of those will lead to various outcomes. So this is so applicable to the scenarios we're talking about here about the transition to retirement or even what the stock market is doing. The narrative, the language, the thoughts that you hold in your head are going to be really important because they're going to dictate your feelings and your behaviors and your outcome. 

Carol: 25:13

So there's another amazing book that I want to reference. And it's called Choose Your Story, Change Your Life by Kendra Hall. And she is actually a storyteller by profession. She comes from the business world, marketing and sales, and using storytelling for those purposes. That's how I found her because she wrote one book called Stories That Stick, which is amazing for the business world. However, she wrote the second book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. And I've actually hunted her down on social media and told her, I'm a huge fan. And I told her that that book is almost better than any other professional book and training that I've been to in the field of psychology. It is so, so good at teaching mindset strategies and helping you become aware of these narratives, the stories that we have in our head that are going to be really impactful. And so that's not an easy skill or muscle to learn. So it's not going to happen overnight. So that's why T minus 10 is a great place to start working on this, because that means you'll be really good at this concept of knowing what's the narrative I have in my head. 

Carol: 26:16

And I find myself talking to people about this all the time right now, or within the past year, you know, with all the instability in the world, you have to be really careful about the thoughts you're keeping in your head. And so if you're walking around and saying the market's terrible, you know, the world is ending, and that's not going to be helpful. Even though some of those concerns may be a little valid, it is not going to be helpful to have those thoughts circulate in your head. And an example of a stronger mindset, a stronger narrative to have in your head, is going to be something like there are a lot of really challenging things happening in the world right now that I can't control, but I'm going to put my energy into the things that are right in front of me that I can control that give me the best chance of being well situated in the future. That's the work everyone benefits from doing.

Jeremy: 27:05

So, Carol, let's say you did all this. Let's say you did the planning. You were T minus 10, you did all the things that you're suggesting. Where do you see the biggest challenge actually entering the phase of retirement and the wheels coming off the cart? Is there anything that you see more common than normal as far as like where things go wrong? 

Carol: 27:24

That's a really good question. When I scan in my brain the different people that I've worked with, I think it's a little bit of everything. I'm having a hard time kind of rank ordering them, but I'll break it down for you, you know, the different challenges that people can run into. So we've talked about the schedule, you know, the kind of waking up Monday morning not knowing what the heck to do with yourself. We've talked about the narrative of the transition to retirement and feeling good about that because you're going to carry that in your head, you know, as you move forward into retirement. We've talked about the structure of day-to-day life. And so, you know, just going back to that conversation, the fruity pebbles, what are the different categories that you're going to want to give some attention to, that in my mind, go into that equation of enabling you to thrive? So it's being productive, doing something productive every day doesn't have to be eight hours worth, but just doing at least one productive thing so you can check off that green task, you know, right. That green little spot in your calendar, Doug. Something social, making sure you're connected because that might have just gone away from your, you know, what was baked into your day-to-day life might no longer be there. So now it's going to take some effort to make sure you're intentionally putting that into your calendar or creating the habit of reaching out to people, making phone calls, texting people, getting together. So there's the productive, there's the social, there's the taking care of your body and your health and creating time for that, whatever that's going to look like. I think everybody benefits from doing one thing in that bucket every day. 

Carol: 28:56

And then there's doing something that provides meaning. If we are used to working and deriving a lot of meaning from our job, and now that goes away, we still crave that. We're humans and we crave that. And that can look really different in retirement, but I think it's still really important to address that bucket. So that can be volunteer work, it could be mentoring, it could be writing, it could be sharing your wisdom. It could be, Doug, like you were saying, doing something totally different, reinventing yourself and finding something different that's meaningful. One of my plans is to, so this is a little unknown fact is I, as a kid, had a job decorating cakes in an ice cream store, and I really, really love it. And it's a hobby of mine. I don't do a lot of it now, but that's part of my retirement plan is to get back into that. So that will give me a lot of meaning. It's not the same meaning that I get from the work I'm doing right now, but that's creating joy. That's helping people feel happy. And that's part of my plan. So, just an example, you know, that it's really important that we still do things that are meaningful, feel like we're giving back to the world, that we add value, that we are purposeful. So I think that's the other bucket that's important. 

Carol: 30:02

And then there's another one. We haven't talked about this yet, but maybe this is a good time for us to get into it. It's your relationship with money and what it's like to make that shift from earning, earning, and seeing that number tick up, up, up to all of a sudden seeing it plateau. Although maybe it'll still grow. The market might still enable it to grow. However, now you're withdrawing from it. And now you're going to start to see that number go down. And that can be really, really difficult. So I think that's another piece of work that has to be done, is to again become intentional about your thoughts about money and create a plan about that.

Doug: 30:36

You just had the segway of segways, which is great because my last and final topic here was our clients that just can't stop. Before I get into that, I do want to address, and I didn't have this on the radar, was our clients that come into the office and we're helping them, or we've had a relationship with them for years. And the elephant in the room is, they live long enough, they're going to run out of money. And being able to have the relationship with that fact that at some point this number is going to grind down and it's going to start to grind down at a quicker and quicker rate because your base of assets is shrinking. And if your base of assets is shrinking, your base of returns is shrinking as well. And my average client is about 62 to 64 years old, which means I have a lot of 70s and 80s that are kind of going through this right now. And it's really, really hard to swallow. So I don't know if I do this the right way or not, but I feel like the only way to do it is to do it with a mix of being empathetic, trying to be calm, but also being real. Right, that if somebody is going to run out of money at age whatever it is, but they're still living in a condo that they purchased 15 years ago. Well, you know, they are going to have to think really hard about maybe pulling that lever in the next X years so that there is this other whoosh of liquidity so they can afford to make their next choice about how they live, right. 

Doug: 32:03

So I'm really glad you brought that up. I do want to ask you this question, which is we have some clients that are on the other side of the coin, which is it doesn't matter how many times I show them their retirement income analysis, they don't feel ready. And the numbers bear out that it's going to be really hard for them to run out of money. They've done all the right things. You know, they've worked hard, they've been pragmatic, they've managed debt, they've not kept credit card balances, they've saved into that 401k, they've stuck to the plan. We've worked together and we've kind of had this sunset of an investment plan where they were aggressive and growth-oriented earlier on and then became more preservation and income-oriented. Fine. We checked all these boxes, but they're still not comfortable stopping.

Carol: 32:44

Yeah. So I'm going to give you what might be a slightly unexpected response to that.

Doug: 32:49

Please go.

Carol: 32:50

Which is to say that I think there's a lot of value in not stopping completely, not going from one extreme to another, not going from full-time work, you know, 40, 60, 80 hours to zero. And these days, you know, with the amazing world that we live in right now, there are so many ways to work part-time. There's so many interesting and modern job titles and job environments that it's actually so much more doable now to have a part-time or even less than part-time, you know, very, very part-time consulting or whatever kind of gig that, you know, many decades ago wasn't possible. You worked your nine to five job and you clocked in and you clocked out, and that was it. But now we have so many options available to us. So as we go back to those different buckets that I talked about, then I actually think it's a great setup for success with all of those to gradually transition out if you are able. And then you're getting used to having more time on your hands and not earning quite as much, but you just give yourself a more gradual chance to adapt.

Doug: 33:53

Boy did you crush that one, because that conversation comes up every single week where Jeremy and I are lucky enough that we have lots of very different and interesting people. Our client base is pretty diverse, and there's a broad swath of talents there. And among that broad swath of talents is, you know, a whole host of people that maybe were corporate employees that could at some point take these skills that they've acquired and this network that they've acquired over decades and be their own boss. And maybe, as you're saying, scale out of the workforce full-time on their own terms. And I think what I've seen, I always joke about I'm terrible at capturing soft data within our practice, right. Because it's we have anecdotal stories, but I don't have the data from our years of work, right. But I'm definitely seeing more clients who are shifting into some sort of semi-retirement on their own terms. And the interesting thing is it ends up being a financial positive because they end up having better work-life balance, possibly working longer, having an income in a portion of their lives that they didn't expect to have income. Maybe they're having a bit of fun with it too, right. Which is cool. I have multiple examples of that in my client base, which is great.

Carol: 35:12

Yeah, I think it's a great thing. Yeah.

Jeremy: 35:15

What struck me when you were talking about the buckets, yeah, that scaling back, right, that maybe hits that meaning bucket. You don't necessarily need to do it for the money anymore, right. So it can fill that bucket. But the irony that struck me was this requires a discipline. This is a disciplined thing that you need to do going into retirement. At the end, you're thinking, oh, good, I can finally let my hair down, right. But you need to be disciplined about the things that you talked about. Those things aren't easy. To have your calendar filled with, even if it's social activities or relationship or productivity things, that's not an easy thing to do and stay consistent with. It's kind of like not too different than the consistency of things we say to do when you're in the accumulation phase, but you need to be consistent with that as well.

Carol: 35:58

I agree, which is why it's so good to be, I mean, all of us benefit from working on it no matter where you are in life. But if we're talking specifically about retirement, that's why it's really good to give yourself 10 years to work on it because it's going to be different, it's going to be hard. But I think it's one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself. And so it's a great place to get some support from other people, coaching, you know, whatever it is, it will have such a payoff if you get really good at it now. Wherever you are in life, hearing this now, this is the time to get even better at doing that.

Doug: 36:31

Carol, this has been absolutely fabulous. We really appreciate you being here. You know, our constant listeners really want us to get to the end part of the show, which is Jeremy's classic dad joke segment. But before we get into that, thank you so much. In prepping for this and talking with you, it's great because I feel like I picked up a couple of new tools that I can share with people again, because hindsight being 2020, Jeremy and I did not get that psychology degree before entering a field that did require some psychology. So thanks for being here. Thanks for your help. And now we get to the fun part, right, JV?

Jeremy: 37:04

That's right. That's right. (Music. Hold on. Daddy, don't try to be cool. Don't try to be cool, bro, with your dad jokes.) In having Dr. Pearlman with us today, we are actually going to do the mom joke segment.

Carol: 37:19

Oh, I'm so honored.

Jeremy: 37:21

So the mom joke segment is also, let's just say, it makes sense for Carol because these are tennis mom jokes. One of Carol's passion is tennis, so wanted to make sure that we hit those. So that you can use around the court and when you're out on tournaments and things like that. So, number one, I have two of them. Why should you never start a relationship with a tennis player?

Carol: 37:44

Am I supposed to answer this? 

Jeremy: 37:45

Yeah, it's open. It's open. It's open for all.

Doug: 37:49

Yeah, as you think about this, Carol, by the way, just like don't feel bad because so Matt and I, our stats are really, really poor. I think we're like one for 35 or something like that. No pressure.

Carol: 38:01

I would say because you'll never see them.

Jeremy: 38:05

It's that intensive, huh?

Carol: 38:07 

Yeah. 

Jeremy: 38:09

Big commitment, big commitment. It's because love means nothing to them.

Doug: 38:14

Oh man, that one's good. 

Carol: 38:17

Badumdum, that's good.

Jeremy: 38:21

All right. Number two. Why do tennis players have such low self-esteem?

Carol: 38:31

God, I'm stumped. I got nothing.

Jeremy: 38:34

It's because of all their faults.

Doug: 38:37

Oh seems so easy in hindsight.

Carol: 38:41

Yeah, that one hurts.

Doug: 38:43

Oh my goodness gracious. Doctor Carol Perlman. Can we have you back sometime?

Carol: 38:49

I would love that. And I'm happy to consult, you know, as things come up in your practice. I'm happy to be here as a resource for both of you.

Doug: 38:57

Heck yes. Thanks so much. We learned a lot. Hopefully, if you've been listening, you had a couple takeaways too. Oh, and Carol, if somebody has questions for you or wants to get in touch with you, how do they reach you?

Carol: 39:10

Absolutely, happy to help. You can find me on my website, CarolPerlman.com. And I'm also on Instagram, Carol Perlman. I post a lot of content sharing day-to-day tips on creating healthy habits. So either way is great.

Doug: 39:26

And you're also a podcaster. So how can we find your podcast and what's the name of it?

Carol: 39:31

Yes, thank you. It's Healthy Habits 4 Life. I've been around for four and a half years now. I cover a range of topics from productivity, time management, sleep, exercise, nutrition, mindset, psychology, anything pertaining to health and wellness. So we'd love to have you check it out.

Doug: 39:48

I love it. Please go check out Dr. Perlman online or on the podcast. Thanks again. Thanks once again to our friend and producer, Matt Hanna. Matt is a Watertown resident and does a great job here in the community. If you're listening to this, and especially if you live in and around Watertown, please check out Matt's podcast, Little Local Conversations, where Matt has these fascinating conversations with folks all over town. It's a great way to get to know people, you know, without actually sitting down with them for a cup of coffee because Matt's kind of doing that for you. So a lot of fascinating people, fascinating conversations. Matt, thanks as always for your help. Dr. Perlman, thank you again. Appreciate you. Thanks for listening. This has been the Arsenal Money Clip. And if you got questions for us, please visit our website, www.arsenalfinancial.com, or drop us a line at info at arsenalfinancial.com. And we will see you next time.

Speaker: 40:39

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member FINRA SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listeners' personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.