Ep 485: Exercises to Help Clients Better Navigate the Transition to Retirement After Having Done It Yourself with Michael Kay
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.7 • 719 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While financial advisors and their clients often focus on creating a succesful retirement income plan, a successful, meaningful retirement goes well beyond dollars and cents. In this episode, we dive into the deeper side of the retirement transition and why many high-performing professionals (including financial advisors) underestimate the psychological shift that comes with leaving a decades-long career.
Michael Kay is a retired financial advisor and a current life coach and author, and joins the show today to share the personal challenges he faced transitioning from advisory firm owner to retiree. Listen in to learn practical exercises and questions that financial advisors can use to help clients prepare for life beyond their careers. You'll hear how to help retirees design what their weeks will actually look like, how to think through changes in social structures after leaving the workplace, and how finding new ways to make a meaningful impact can create purpose in retirement.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/485
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to the 485th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:35.5 | Michael K. Michael is a retired financial advisor and a current life |
| 0:39.2 | coach and author who helps high-performing individuals successfully make the transition to retirement. |
| 0:44.9 | What's unique about Michael, though, is how he has developed questions and exercises that financial |
| 0:49.4 | advisors can use to help clients and themselves make the transition to retirement. In this episode, we talk |
| 0:55.2 | in depth about how, while Michael identified plenty of activities that would fill his time in retirement, |
| 1:00.4 | he found he didn't give himself enough time to process the transition from leading a financial |
| 1:04.7 | firm to taking on other pursuits. How Michael considers the retirement transition to be a grieving |
| 1:09.8 | process, requiring thoughtful |
| 1:11.5 | consideration given that many successful professionals have a multi-decade relationship with their |
| 1:15.9 | job, which can become part of their identity, and how Michael found that acknowledging that his |
| 1:20.9 | previous professional success was enough helped him gain the closure to move on to the next phase of |
| 1:25.9 | his life. We also talk about how Michael |
| 1:27.9 | finds that advisors can support clients by having them think through how they will fill up their |
| 1:32.7 | entire weeks in retirement, going beyond just a few hobbies, and along with contingency plans |
| 1:37.5 | if health or other issues prevent them from pursuing their initial plans, how Michael suggests that |
| 1:42.3 | clients think back to their first day at work to |
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