353: A Retirement Dilemma: Wisdom You Need Before Leaving Full-Time Work with Steve Lopez
Retire With Purpose - The Retirement Podcast
Casey Weade
4.7 • 564 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, I'm talking to Steve Lopez. Steve has been a writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2001 and a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He's won over a dozen national journalism awards and three local news Emmys, and he's written three novels, including The Soloist, which was adapted into one of my favorite movies.
In Steve's new book, Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement from Some Who've Done It and Some Who Never Will, he explores the meaning of work and how it defines us in a combination of memoirs, interviews, and guidance.
The book features conversations with a wide variety of people, including some who chose not to retire (like director Mel Brooks) and those who simply can't retire, as well as aging scientists, geriatric specialists, and psychiatrists.
In today's conversation, Steve and I talk about what it means to live with purpose and passion, how to tell which of the five categories of retirees that you fall into, and the big financial trends we should all be thinking about as the world around us changes.
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In this podcast interview, you'll learn:
- Why retirement isn't necessarily about recreating your identity, but bringing a sense of identity with you into your next act.
- What Steve learned from retirees who didn't have enough structure when their primary careers ended–and from guys like Mel Brooks and Norman Lear, who are happily working in their 90s and 100s.
- How boomers entering retirement with medical debt, climate change, and other factors are going to impact life for all of us, regardless of age.
- What happened when Steve told his wife that working from home during COVID was a preview of retirement–and how they resolved the conflict that came from it.
- What it truly means to go where life is and do what replenishes you.
Show Notes: Howardbailey.com/353
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Retirement is a big transition. It'll change everything about your relationships with your spouse, |
| 0:05.0 | where you've got to recalibrate how you spend time with each other, how much time you have with each other. |
| 0:11.0 | Your relationship to your ex-friends will change. You might develop new friends. This is all very difficult, |
| 0:18.0 | and you need to have something of a plan for building yourself |
| 0:22.6 | some new sense of how you're going to spend your day. |
| 0:35.3 | Welcome to the Retireous Purpose Podcast. |
| 0:37.8 | I am your host, Casey Weed, and it is our mission here at Howard Bailey to help others gain clarity and purpose and elevate meaning in their daily lives through practical and proven financial strategies. |
| 0:49.3 | We do that with you here on the podcast. |
| 0:51.8 | Every single Friday, you'll join us for a weekend reading podcast. That's a |
| 0:56.4 | short form podcast where we update you on some of the latest trends to help you make better |
| 1:01.5 | decisions about your life and finance. Get yourself signed up to get that email. Just shoot us a |
| 1:07.1 | text at 866, 482, 9559. Just text us WR, and we'll get you signed up to receive that |
| 1:14.1 | weekly email and all the other goodies that come along with it. |
| 1:18.2 | And what we're doing here today is what we do every other Monday. |
| 1:21.6 | Say every other Monday here on the podcast, we bring on one of our world-class guests, where we give to you a long-form |
| 1:30.0 | interview on guests talking about everything from the financial to the non-financial aspects |
| 1:35.4 | of finance and retirement. Today, our guest is Steve Lopez, award-winning columnist, |
| 1:43.2 | best-selling author. He's been writing for the LA Times |
| 1:46.0 | since 2001, a four-times Pulitzer Prize finalist. He's won more than a dozen national |
| 1:51.8 | journalism awards, wrote for Time. It's Sports Illustrated, Life and Entertainment Weekly. |
| 1:57.4 | He's won three local news Emmys, author of three novels, and the best-selling |
| 2:03.4 | non-fiction book, The Soloist, which you probably remember if you're a movie buff like me, |
... |
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