by Joe Hearn | Aug 23, 2021 | Health
Just like the rest of your body, your brain changes as you age. Sometimes those changes are normal and relatively minor, such as forgetting a word or a person’s name. In a small number of adults, however, those changes are indicative of something more severe that can affect your daily life and decision making. That’s concerning from a health standpoint, but also because a misstep with your financial or legal affairs could derail your retirement. How can you spot the difference between a normal cognitive change and something more serious? Below is a list of 15 potential indicators of cognitive decline. Again, we’ve all experienced the occasional item on the list, but if you suspect something more serious than that (either with yourself or someone you love), it might be worthwhile to have a conversation with your doctor.
- Difficulty with daily tasks such as housework, paying bills or following a recipe
- Forgetting important dates or events
- Getting lost while walking or driving in a familiar area
- Forgetting how to play games that you’ve always enjoyed
- Difficulty participating in a favorite hobby or sport
- Frequently losing or misplacing items
- Losing track of the day, week, month or seasons
- Difficulty remembering words
- Difficulty carrying on a conversation
- Difficulty planning
- Trouble with familiar tasks or simple concepts
- Disorganized files, documents or checkbook
- Decline in personal hygiene
- Mood swings or depression
- Mental fog or confusion
Again, if you suspect that you or someone you love might be suffering from cognitive decline, meet with your doctor for evaluation, diagnosis and treatment. And meet with your advisers to make sure that your financial and legal affairs (e.g. will, trust, powers of attorney) are in order.
And don’t forget about prevention. Your health is going to change as you age. It’s unavoidable. But there are things you can do to help maintain your cognitive health. The Mayo Clinic recommends that you stay physically and mentally active, eat a healthy diet, maintain social connections, and manage risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. In short, take care of yourself and you’ll greatly increase your odds of having a healthy, happy retirement.
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Aug 3, 2021 | Lifestyle Design, Pursuits, Saving
The Observer Effect is the tendency for people to change their behavior if they know they’re being watched. The interesting thing about it is that it seems to work even if you’re both the watcher and the watched. In other words, monitoring what you do seems to change what you do. Management guru Peter Drucker said it this way: “What gets measured gets managed.”
Intuitively this makes sense. If you weigh yourself regularly and track what you eat, it will likely impact what and how much you eat. And it works with more than just diet and exercise. It can have a positive impact on your finances and lifestyle as well. What do you think would happen if you started to consistently track what you spend? Or how much you save? Or your progress toward paying off your debt? Or how close you are to your retirement goals? Or how much progress you’re making on that particular hobby. Or how intentional you are with your holidays and time with family?
At Intentional Retirement, we help clients with money and meaning. The money helps them sleep at night. The meaning gives them a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Since those two things are part of our DNA, we’re always looking for ways to not just educate and inform, but to actually prompt people to make positive changes in their lives. We want you to take action. To change for the better. To become the person you want to be. To have a secure, meaningful life doing the things you want with the people you love. The Observer Effect might just help. Give it a try. Start watching yourself. Decide what you want to do or what you want to change and start tracking your progress. I think you’ll find it will help you be more disciplined, focused, consistent and…yes…intentional.
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jun 25, 2021 | Retirement
Quick review. At Intentional Retirement, we believe that retirement is an intentional way of living that prioritizes freedom, fulfillment, purpose and relationships. It starts today and is an incremental process of aligning your lifestyle and actions with your highest priorities.
Gone are the days (or at least they should be) when retirement was about how old you are or whether you punch a time clock. That just puts you on the deferred life plan where you push your dreams off until “Someday” rather than living life to the full now. Not only that, but it doesn’t give you much time. If you retire at 65 and stay healthy and active until 75 (a stretch for many) then you’ve got 10 years to do everything you’ve been putting off for the last 40. Ten years is not enough.
With all that in mind, here are three essential ingredients of an ideal retirement (and life).
Optimal Health. Here’s an obvious statement: Most of the things you want to do in life require you to be alive. And not just alive, but healthy and fit. The healthier you are, the more you’ll be able to do. So start taking your health seriously. Ask yourself, “What actions can I take today that will put me on a path to improving my health?” A few big areas to focus on are what you eat, your vitals (weight, blood pressure, etc.), how much you sleep, how active you are and how good your relationships are. Pick an area and start working on it. Once you have that dialed in, add something else.
Financial Freedom. Here’s another obvious statement: Things cost money. You don’t need to be rich, but you need enough money to fund your ideal lifestyle. Obviously, that’s a different amount for everyone. Find out how much it is for you and get to work. Save more. Be a good steward of your resources. Stop spending on things that aren’t important to you. The more financial independence you have, the less beholden you are to a job or lender and the more flexible you can be in your life decisions. The goal is to control more of your time. The more time you control, the more retired you are.
Purpose. Neurologist, psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said that striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. In other words, we’re hard wired to want purpose and meaning. But it doesn’t just happen. You need to work at it. You need to decide what you really want out of life and start taking those plans seriously.
Obviously, I’ve written about these things before, but it’s always a good idea to review your core beliefs and recalibrate to true north so your plans will stay on track. I’ll put a few links below for further reading.
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | May 24, 2021 | Happiness, Risk, Work
Hi everyone! Long time no talk. I hit pause on my writing for a bit to focus on some big changes in my world. As many of you know, in addition to my writing, I work as a financial planner. Toward the end of last year, I decided to go out on my own and start my own financial planning company. It’s something I’ve thought about doing for a long time, but never pulled the trigger.
Then last year I thought, what better time to do it than during a pandemic induced global shutdown! Seriously though, I’d been with my previous company for 25 years, enjoyed the people and the work and made a good living. It was a tough decision to move on, but it ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (more on the new company at the end of this article).
I’m sure many of you have faced similar forks in the road or are maybe even contemplating one right now. So for my first article back, I thought I’d write about the best advice I got and lessons I learned as I contemplated the change and then took the plunge. Hopefully, it will help some of you
Don’t let fear make your decision. Pretty much anything you do in life that’s worthwhile and difficult will get you out of your comfort zone. In other words, it’s going to scare you. That fear is a good indicator that you should be paying attention. It’s a reminder that you should consider your path carefully. Just don’t give it veto power over your decision making. If you let fear make your decisions, you’ll never do anything worthwhile. Choosing unhappiness over uncertainty is often a bad choice.
Sometimes you’re not ready to do it until you’re ready to do it. When I told my brother about my decision to start the company, his first response was “It’s about time.” Then he laughed and said he was only kidding. He’s a successful business owner and he said looking back on it, he wasn’t ready to start his business until the day he started it. Had he started it 6 years or even 6 months earlier it would have failed. As I said before, don’t let fear hold you back, but also don’t start before you have the things you need to make it work. Timing is important.
Sometimes the only difference between a huge success and the status quo is just a willingness to say yes. I have a friend who coaches founders of very successful organizations. He told me it’s easy to look at these people and think that their success is a direct result of their skills, hard work or brilliance. Truth be told, he’s often surprised by how normal they are. What they have, however, is a willingness to try. When the time came where a decision was required, they said yes and took the risk. You don’t need to be Albert Einstein or Elon Musk to succeed at something. You just need to put your yes on the table.
Sometimes the best time to do something is when things look their worst. When I talked to my dad about it, I asked if I should wait because of all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. He thought about it for a second and then told me the story of when he started his business back in the early 70s. The economy was in terrible shape and he’d just been laid off. Unlike me, he didn’t have much choice about what came next. No one was hiring and he had a growing family to feed, so he started his own company. Looking back on it years later, he realized that was the perfect time to start. His opportunity was greatest when he said yes to something that everyone else was saying no to.
Sometimes older is better. We tend to venerate youth and think of our 20s and 30s as the ideal time of life to take big risks. That’s not always the case. Yes, as you get older you have more responsibilities and more at stake, but you also have more skills, wisdom and life experience. When discussing my situation with a close friend he said “You’ve been doing this for 25 years. There are very few corners you can’t see around.” It’s easy to get complacent and play defense later in life, but truth be told, that’s often a great time to go on offense.
Get comfortable with discomfort. As we age, we often get comfortable. We make more money. We upgrade our house, cars and lifestyle. We get settled into a career. As this happens, we’re less willing to rock the boat. Less willing to take risks. More willing to compromise. Sometimes our fear of discomfort can keep us from doing something that we need to do. If you take a big risk or make a significant change, I can almost guarantee that you’ll go through a period of discomfort. There will be stress, uncertainty, long hours and a big learning curve. But there will also be growth, excitement, challenge, fulfillment and payoff.
Focus on taking the next step. A big change often means a long To-Do list. Don’t get distracted or overwhelmed. Just focus on what’s next. It you try to do too much, very little gets done and the things that you do, don’t get done well. Concentrate your efforts on a few wildly important goals that can be broken down into a series of logical steps. Each day ask yourself: “What’s important now?” What’s the next step that needs to be done to advance the process? Whatever that is, that’s your focus. Not the 500 other things on your list.
Accept Reality. Sometimes an option you’re considering depends on someone or something else. If you’ve tried that door and it stays closed, however, that’s probably a good indication that your way forward is on a different path. Give thanks for the clarity, accept reality, make your decision and move forward.
Don’t burn bridges. Ever. If change takes you someplace new, leave on good terms. Act honorably. Be transparent. Wish everyone well and move on.
How about you? Is there a change you want to make or a new adventure you want to pursue? There’s no time like the present. Don’t talk yourself out of it just because it’s scary or because you’ve had a few birthdays. Decide what you really want out of life and then start taking those plans very seriously.
About the new company
In my financial planning practice, I focus almost exclusively on retirement planning. For 25 years, I did that work at another company and then did all my writing about retirement in books, newspaper articles and at this website. I always thought it would make sense to do those things under the same umbrella, so when I made the switch, I jumped through the hoops necessary to turn Intentional Retirement from a publishing company into a financial planning company. You won’t notice much change going forward. I’ll still post articles regularly at the site and there’s no cost or obligation to follow along. That information is general in nature, however, and is not intended as advice for your specific situation. If you enjoy the articles, but want to do more detailed planning for your retirement, now I can likely help with that as well. Just reach out to me at Intentional Retirement HQ and we can talk further. No pressure obviously, but feel free to touch base if you’d like more information. Thanks for following along. Like I mentioned earlier, the transition went amazingly well and I’m settled into a new day to day rhythm. With that in the rear view mirror, I’m looking forward to writing more regularly again and I’m excited for the new adventure.
A quick housekeeping item. As a result of the changes described above, I had to make a few updates to the site’s Terms of Use, Disclaimer and Privacy Policy. Feel free to review them when you have a chance.
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Sep 30, 2020 | Happiness, Lifestyle Design
I was driving past a large cornfield the other day—I live in Nebraska after all—and had a few thoughts on sowing and reaping. We’ve all heard the phrase “You reap what you sow.” That’s true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Yes, if you plant corn, you’ll get corn. No surprise there. But there’s also an element of time and quantity. Time in the sense that it takes time for the seeds you plant to germinate, grow and yield their crop. Quantity in the sense that you often yield much more than you plant. With corn, for example, 10 pounds of seed typically yields 7,280 pounds (130 bushels per acre) of corn. So we reap what we sow, but it takes time and the output usually exceeds input.
As I’m sure you’ve deduced, I’m not talking about corn. I’m talking about living a secure, purpose filled, meaningful life. You won’t get a crop that you didn’t plant. If you want security and meaning, you need to plant “seeds” that will yield those things. Seeds that yield financial independence. Seeds that yield quality relationships. Seeds that yield a healthy body and mind. Seeds that yield meaningful work. Seeds that yield unique experiences and lifelong learning. Seeds that yield satisfaction, contentment, happiness and fulfillment. And once those seeds are planted, you need to nurture them just like the farmer waters, fertilizes and weeds his crop. And then one day, you will have a bountiful harvest. Some of your crops will mature quickly. Some will take more time. Either way, don’t wait. Start planting today with tomorrow’s harvest in mind.
