Short Stuff: The Retirement Curse

00:00:04 Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Chuck, Jerry, Dave, short stuff, tally ho. 00:00:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about retirement today and specifically what can be referred to as the retirement curse, which is this idea that, you know, maybe you're doing fine in life and you're chugging along at your job and then you retire and you encounter all sorts of problems, maybe mental health problems, maybe physical health problems. And retirement can be the trigger to that kind of thing. 00:00:37 Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those things where a lot of people are familiar with anecdotally, like maybe they've seen somebody, you know, just their health declines very quickly or it's just something changes for the worse from retirement. Um, and it's actually quantifiable. Um, and apparently five to six years after retirement, this is just the average American. I suspect it's not quite as bad elsewhere. And in fact, I couldn't find mention of the retirement curse as we're presenting it anywhere else. It does seem to be a semi American phenomenon. 00:01:11 Speaker 2: Interesting. 00:01:13 Speaker 1: But there's this, uh, The average American shows a 6% to 9% decline in mental health within the first five to six years after retirement. A 5% to 6% increase in illness condition, right? 00:01:25 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:01:27 Speaker 1: A 5% to 16% increase in difficulties with daily activities. And when they control all the other variables, they're like, it seems to be retirement. But of course, retirement itself is not doing this to you. It's all the life changes that come from retirement. 00:01:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's that transition. How you deal with that is really, really key and something that you really got to think about going into it. I hope if you're a person of retirement age, you've got a plan in place. We're going to talk more about that. But it seems like the worst cases are when people just retire and all of a sudden they're like, wait a minute, I have my days free all the time. I'm not going to this place anymore. If you went to an office, let's say. I'm not surrounded by people every day that I normally might be. You know, going to work is mental engagement. And, you know, even if you're not doing like hard labor, just getting up and getting out of bed and going to an office and moving about the world represents some kind of physical activity. And especially if when you retire, you just kind of hit the couch or the recliner. That's that's a big difference. 00:02:36 Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, like those people that you're interacting with, even if you work from home, just interacting with them on calls or via email, like you don't have that all of a sudden. If you start emailing those same people, they're like, you retired. Go do …