Live Long and Prosper

Ric chats with longevity guru Paul Irving on how to make your next 30 years count

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, December 8th. Coming up on today's show, “How to make the most of life in your later years”, we'll talk with Paul Irving of the Milken Institute. Plus, last week I told you what a public key is. Today, I'll tell you what a private key is.

William wrote me an email to ask a question. You can do the same. And William said to me, Ric, “Could you do a podcast about quiet quitting? I'm not sure what it is, but I've heard that it has become quite prevalent since the pandemic. I'm not sure I could ever consider participating in it, but will it be in our future?”

So let me explain to you what quiet quitting is in this relatively recent phenomenon. The notion is that you have a job. You hate your job. You're not satisfied with either being forced into the office or that you're stuck working from home. And so you're just going to start doing a bad job. Not that you're really overtly messing things up. You're just going to not work so hard. Your productivity is going to decline. You're not going to go out of your way to be a great employee. In other words, you're just quietly kind of hanging back, almost as though you've quit, but you haven't officially quit. You're still collecting the paycheck. You figure it'll take months for them to finally get so fed up with you that they finally do fire you. Fine with you.

In the meantime, you're collecting the paycheck and getting all the benefits. Quiet Quitting. Many consider it unethical and inappropriate, but millions of people apparently have been doing it over the past few years. But quiet quitting is “so last year”, William, it's not really going on anymore today to any major measure. Instead, quiet quitting is no longer a thing.

The opposite is happening. Employers are now complaining, not that too many workers are quitting, it's that too few of them are quitting. Big companies always project how many of their employees are going to quit each year based on that prediction. They know how many new employees they're going to have to hire to replace the ones who quit. And if business is bad and people are going to quit, you don't have to hire to replace them. But workers today have a very different attitude from 2 or 3 years ago.

Today, people are worried about the economy. They think we're going into a recession. And in recessions, companies fire people because of lower revenues. So people aren't quitting quietly or otherwise. Instead, they're doing their best to hang on to their jobs. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Pitney Bowes, Morgan Stanley, all of them, and many more say that fewer people are quitting than they anticipated. And so many of them are therefore forced to do layoffs to get people out of the company.

In a recent survey, 73% of workers said they planned to stay at their jobs. That's up from 61% last year. So, William, do your job and talk to your boss about how you're doing. Remember, just because you're doing a good job doesn't mean you get to keep it. Ask how the company is doing and whether your position is secure your position, not you. You might be the greatest employee ever, but if the position is being eliminated due to budget cuts, you're out anyway.

Remember, you never really have a job. “Have” suggests ownership. I have a car, I have clothes, I have a bicycle, but I don't have a job. I might own my bike, but my employer owns my job. It's theirs. They can do with it anything they want at any time. Oh, you think there are laws out there to protect you? Those laws might require that your employer give you notice or severance, but in the end, the job belongs to them, not you.

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Exclusive Interview: Paul Irving, senior advisor at the Milken Institute

Ric Edelman: This is The Truth About Your Future. And the one thing in our future is we're all going to die. I know that's not a whole lot of fun, so let's talk about what happens before then, because quite frankly, there's a whole lot of time before then, in fact, longer than ever. And no better person to talk about that with us than Paul Irving. Paul is a distinguished scholar at USC School of Gerontology. He's the senior advisor at the Milken Institute, where he chaired the center for the Future of Aging. And he's a fellow at Harvard and also on the board of East West Bank. Paul, great to be with you again. How are you? 

Paul Irving: Great. Great seeing you. Congratulations on the podcast. 

Ric Edelman: Thank you. It's a lot of fun to produce each morning. There's a demographic shift going on. People really aren't focusing on death very much these days. They really are focusing on quality of life. In elder years. That seems to be something we never, ever used to talk about. 

Paul Irving: Well, in many ways as they should. I mean, Ric, for most of human history, average lifespans were in the range of 30, maybe 40 years. And really starting about 200 years ago with advancements in science and sanitation and safety, we started this kind of inexorable climb, this period of increasing longevity that's continued really up to today with kind of a blip related to Covid that we can talk about. But, what is meant is that we have more time to fill. And the great thing is science has enabled that, and many of the rest of us are trying to figure out what to do with do with those times. I often say that that science has succeeded in social science has failed. We do have more years, and that means more years to think about health, more years to think about wealth, more years to think about learning and work and relationships and lots of other things. 

Ric Edelman: Well, I want to elaborate on that. Science has succeeded. Social science has failed. Elaborate on that.

Paul Irving: Well, if we did all the things that we know we should do, right? So let's talk about some basic advances, things like antibiotics which have had a huge effect on average longevity, the reduction in infant mortality rates, the creation of advanced medications and therapies, and then things that we just know we should do that public health tells us things like not smoking, the risks of obesity, watching out for falls as we get older and lots of other things. So if we did all the things that we know we should do because of scientific research and scientific innovation, we'd actually live longer and healthier. But we don't do that. Social science has failed in the sense that we really haven't redefined these longer stages of life, this new period of life that we have the opportunity to enjoy. But we really haven't developed norms, cultural standards, kind of predictable pathways that enable that sense of enjoyment, accomplishment, fulfillment that we kind of understand how to realize in our younger years, but maybe not so much in our older ones. 

Ric Edelman: And is this because the people are not used to the fact that they're going to be living 20, 30, 40 years longer than they thought when they were babies? 

Paul Irving: Look, I know I'm talking to Ric Edelman, who spent many, many, many years, helping people not only not only aspire to increasing wealth, but to protect themselves in their later years, their retirement years. And I know the principle risk that people faced a generation ago was early death. That was the sales proposition for life insurance. You know, we were worried about what would happen to our kids and what would happen to our significant others if for some reason we died early today? The biggest risk in many ways isn't death. Even though I heard you at the beginning of the show, death is inevitable. You know, death rates remain consistent at 100%. But the principal risk these days is living longer than we expect to and running out of money, running out of health, running out of things to do, running out of relationships. And so we have to prepare for the reality, particularly if we get to a certain age that we're likely to live much longer. It's interesting when we talk about average longevity. So for example, in the US it's kind of mid to late 70s for men, early 80s for women. But that Ric, is from birth. 

From, let's say, 65, the odds are really good that people will have another ten, 15, 20 years to fill. And so if you retire when you're 55, let's say, and hypothetically, you're going to live to your 90. That means you have 35 years to do something with. What are you going to do? Who are you going to call? Not Ghostbusters. So, the idea is that all institutions in society, certainly, by the way, wealth managers, the business that you came in and did so successfully, but people in companies that are thinking about workforce innovation, people developing products and services, travel, education, really everything in our society has to change to address and frankly, realize the benefits of these additional years that we have. When you get to my stage Ric, I’m now 71, you get to this point and you realize that the most valuable thing you have in life is time. Time with loved ones, time to enjoy yourself, time to learn, time to work. Time to continue to be productive and to make a contribution. Enabling people to fill that time in ways that are meaningful and purposeful for them just couldn't be a more important goal. 

Ric Edelman: And it's a real challenge for society to make this shift. Look at what we're doing right now. We're still having people graduate from school in their early 20s, in their teens, if they don't go to college, even though that structure began several generations ago when people were going to be dead in their 60s. Well, now we're dead in our 80s and 90s, but we're still finished with school in our 20s. So all we did was take this extra 20 or 30 years you're describing and tack it on to the very end of life. We're not interjecting it into life itself, and people are kind of struggling to figure out how to deal with this new paradigm. Is this a paradox that we're creating of longevity? 

Paul Irving: Well, I do call it the longevity paradox in the sense that again, we have these possibilities, but we're not realizing them. And your friend and mine, Laura Carstensen, who talks about the new map of life, recognizes that it should be more than years just tacked on to the onto the end. You should be able to realize the possibilities of these of these additional years really throughout life. Your point about education is spot on. And by the way, this is not just an issue for individuals, for all of us who should realize the benefits of lifelong learning, who need to be reskilled, who need to have the opportunity to continue to learn. It's critical for educational institutions when we don't have a birth rates at replacement rate and we don't. By the way, birth replacement rate is about something between 2 and 2.1 per couple. A little bit more than two kids these days, in addition to getting married later and later, or having fewer and fewer kids and are very, very much below replacement rate, by the way, not just in the US but throughout the EU, very much in Asia. You know that Japan is the first super age society, but Korea has a rapidly aging population. China has a huge challenge of population aging.

So back in the in the US, institutions that used to be able to rely on a on a demographic pyramid, a large and growing base of young people who would populate those universities and colleges can no longer rely on that, meaning that half of the colleges and universities in America are at risk of failure because they're dependent on tuition revenue. Principally, they don't have large endowments, unlike the Ivy Leagues and some of the others, and they have an inadequate flow of young people that represent prospects for them to bring in. There's an answer to that, and the answer is staring them, it's hiding in plain sight. It's staring them right in the face. And the answer to that is why just focus your offerings? Why just invest all that you've invested in your human capital, your physical infrastructure, your technology capacity, and all the rest? Why just focus that on people, let's say between 18 and 22 or 23 or 24; see the entire spectrum of population as a potential customer in effect for your educational institutions. 

Ric Edelman: And clearly people have to engage in lifelong learning to stay current with technological trends, etc.. So if there aren't enough 18-year-olds to recruit into your university, go after the 68 year olds...

Paul Irving: Yes, the 68 year olds. And you know what? They realize the incredible benefits. And I've been the beneficiary of this, as I know you have, of intergenerational connection. We learn mentoring goes both ways. Young people learn from us, by the way, particularly if they're not our own kids and we learn from young people. There's a wonderful vibrancy in intergenerational student bodies. And by the way, not just student bodies, faculties. You have no idea how many times I've spoken to emeritus faculty groups, retired faculty groups, these incredibly talented, accomplished people, highly, highly educated, really interested, really engaged. And you know what? They retire in universities, just put them out to pasture and they have nothing to do. Why in the world aren't they back on campus mentoring students, engaged in project development, thinking in new ways about how to how to use education for the benefit of the broader society. There's so much more opportunity. And frankly, we have a deficit in creative leadership in American educational institutions. There, thankfully are some good examples, but not enough. 

Ric Edelman: Aside from the need for this retooling and alteration, it really comes down to giving us all purpose, doesn't it? 

Paul Irving: It really does. Purpose is something that all of us need throughout life, and I've written a lot about the importance of purpose in aging. Particularly for lots of reasons, because we all need something that's meaningful, a gap that we have the opportunity to fill, something that represents legacy for us and it’s increasingly important notion as we get older. But equally, one of the things that we know from really good research and a whole series of academic institutions and even in the federal government, is that purpose particularly manifested through volunteering and contribution is good for our health. It's not just good for the world, it actually is good for our cognitive health and cardiovascular health and osteoarthritic health and the like. It's kind of remarkable what was called the Corporation on National Community and Community Service, now just called AmeriCorps, had a research project that took a look at the at the impact of volunteering on a series of senior volunteers in its programs over the years and found remarkable health, health benefits, your friend and mine, Linda Fried, who before she was the dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia, was a researcher at Johns Hopkins. 

And they did a fabulous study on a volunteering program of older adults in classrooms. It's called Experience Core, which is now run by AARP. And what they found, not surprisingly, is the program was great for the kids who were the beneficiaries of the service of these older people in classrooms. But surprisingly, it was really good for the health of the older volunteers. They not only felt better about themselves, they were better. So, I always say to people, when you go to your doctor, in addition to tapping on your chest and making you a cough and turning your head sideways, (Ric, you know what I mean), one of the things they should be saying is, okay, tell me about your diet and all the rest and exercise. Tell me about your volunteering. What are you doing that's meaningful and purposeful for you? Because if you're doing that, I know that contributes to your good health. 

Ric Edelman: And the risks. If we don't do this, talk about it individually, talk about it at a social and frankly, an economic, not your economics, but the country's economics at societal level.

Paul Irving: Yeah. I mean, look at an individual and family level. We understand it. We want to live longer, but more important, we want to live healthier. We want to compress what we call mortality and morbidity. We want to extend health span. No one wants to live their live their final years incapacitated, cognitively challenged, etc. So I think all of us have a reason to invest in trying to extend health so that we can live healthy lives as long as possible and shorten that period, that inevitable period before death, in which we become less able to do the things that we care about, about doing from a societal perspective, it's just critical that we that we do this. We know that that entitlement cost is very likely to go up. And I'm a supporter of services and supports for not just for older adults, but for younger people of need. But the reality is, if we can't enable people to work longer, those who want to, if we can't enable people to continue to learn, if we don't keep people healthier and there are things, specific things that we need to do, we should keep people slimmer. 

We may make some enemies by saying this, but smoking cigarettes is the equivalent of rat poison. Thankfully, we've made great progress in reducing in smoking cessation and tobacco control. But we haven't done enough, and there's still far too many people who smoke. You and I both know we have a significant challenge with alcoholism and drug use in the United States, things like that. So if we tackle those things, not ignore them but tackle them, what we're likely to do is not only enable more and more people to live good, healthy, productive and happy lives, but the prospect is for a flourishing society, growing economy, increasing investments, job opportunity, opportunity for innovation, new products and services. So we all have a stake in doing that. And, I don't know why we don't, other than a leadership deficit and way too much time spent on division rather than unity around things that we know we have to do. 

Ric Edelman: All too common a theme with so many of our issues that we're facing. We're talking with Paul Irving, the senior advisor at the Milken Institute, where he chair of the center for the Future of Aging. I want to talk about the longevity economy, Paul, because it's one thing to say, hey, what are you doing in the area of volunteerism? But let's face it, an incredibly large portion of our elders don't have the luxury of volunteering because they're out of money. They need to earn an income, and it is incredibly common for people in their 50s and 60s. I hear it all the time from people in that age group who complain that they are unemployable, that they have lost a job for any one of a gazillion reasons, or they're seeking a new one and they can't get it because the hiring manager is half their age, and there's a certain amount of ageism in society that is preventing a lot of older, wiser, experienced individuals from gaining employment. You recently coauthored a paper that was published by the Harvard Business Review that talks about the issue of the importance of attracting and retaining older workers. Talk about the paper that you helped to write and what your recommendations are. 

Paul Irving: That piece for the Harvard Business Review was really about both older and essential workers. And the only thing I would argue with Ric is you said you said we have some problem with ageism, and it's not some. We have a massive, ubiquitous, widespread problem with ageism across society, in every sector, in every domain and in every business. And again, it's a paradox. Growing old is our common denominator, if we're lucky, and for people who somehow have disdain for it. Pre-retirees and retirees in the United States have less than $100,000 in investable assets. Half of that group have nothing, are completely dependent on Social Security. And even for the upper half, the half that is in slightly better, better shape. There's a huge challenge in the adequacy of retirement assets. So we both need new messaging discipline mechanisms, policies. And I know you've been an advocate on this front that enables people to engage in lifelong saving and lifelong investment and societal contribution to that.

And we need to enable and encourage people who have the aspiration to work more. And that requires a couple of things. One is back to our discussion on lifelong learning, reskilling, training. What we know is that employers spend less money training older employees than they do younger employees. Again, a paradox because older employees tend to stick longer, even though they may have fewer years ahead, they tend to be more loyal and more likely to remain there for training and investment. Training and reskilling investment makes sense, and we need to get over the notion that that for some reason, people with no hair or white hair have less capacity to be productive and make a contribution. Roles can change. And I'll tell you something, something else people talk about when you're speaking to somebody who doesn't just demean older people but tries to rationally say, for example, Ric that the reason why they don't have a program to recruit and retain older employees is that older employees are more expensive, for example, health insurance costs or other things, or that that they are more expensive because the compensation costs. 

I would confront those people and say, have you had a conversation with your older employees? There was a study done years ago that said older workers were more than willing to take pay cuts if they could be offered respectful and flexible roles, new kinds of roles that capitalized on their wisdom and judgment, on their experience, their customer relationships, their multisectoral, problem solving and opportunity creating, but that also address their needs to be caregivers for family members and significant others that address their desire to have more flexibility in their lives for travel and other things. So the bottom line is we have a series of expectations that really are unfounded, that are based on personal bias, without research, without real understanding what we found in the study that was done for the piece that we did for HBR, all of it was intuitive Ric, it was things like clear and honest conversation with your employer about your status. It was flexibility in hours and in structure, understanding that flexibility may come with a cost. People are grown-ups, older people particularly are grown-ups. And they understand if they work less, they're likely to make less. And that may be okay for some of them, they want to be respected. 

Ric Edelman: Well, that's a really key element that they want to be respected, because what I hear so often is the concern that they don't feel that they're being respected by the younger generations, who I think have a very different style of communicating. And that difference in style can often be interpreted as lack of respect. And maybe it is, or maybe it's simply a communication gap rather than a respect gap.

Paul Irving: A different style, which is remarkable to me that employers aren't spending more time thinking about talking with employees, about how they can accommodate their needs and desires. Part of that is recruitment and retention of older workers. A very big part of that, this goes to your point, is the development of new intergenerational workforce strategies, communication strategies, understanding what is needed generation to generation when it's inevitable that a successful business will have more generations in a workplace than was historically the case. It means, obviously, a change in attitudes about immigration and a series of other things. But it's kind of amazing. I flip on business news every morning. Ric, you know I come from a commercial background initially, and I hear lots of hand-wringing over rates, and I hear lots of hand-wringing over whether they'll be hard landings or soft landings. And I hear almost no conversation about what policy changes and practice changes. This is, by the way, both public sector and private sector challenge. What can the government do to change hearts, minds, motivations, etc.? And what can employers do to change the way they think about the future of their workforce and to act on it? And if that's done, we’ll not only have more effective businesses, a better a better economy, but we will address some of the concerns right now. 

Ric Edelman: And so in the end, we can't sit back and wait for the government to fix this or for our employers to address this. What is it that we as individuals need to be doing so that we can maximize the opportunity that we're going to get through this period of turmoil and change effectively and get to where everybody hopes to get, which is the achievement of contentment, satisfaction and security. 

Paul Irving: Well, I'd say all of us have to be advocates for a new view on age, certainly for anybody my age, we've lived through, we've lived through certainly the modern civil rights movement, the modern women's movement, the elevation and advancement of LGBTQ individuals and other movements. And this is a movement that affects all of us. It affects all of us individually as we get older. It affects members of our family, parents, grandparents. And ultimately it will affect our children. When I now look at my little grandchild, my grandson, and I say, what will the world be like when he's my age? I only hope that there's a world in which if he has his grandfather's hairline, that that the world embraces him and is ready to give him not only an opportunity to perform based on his own skills and talents and motivation, but that realizes the benefits of his wisdom and experience and years of contribution. So we all need to be advocates, number one. Number two, we need to have conversations with our employers. HR managers are really busy people. They oftentimes have their heads down. They need to stop looking out the rear view mirror and start looking out the windshield at what's coming demographically. 

And that's true in the C-suite as well. True for labor leaders, true for academics who write on this, who oftentimes provide advice for those designing the future economy. And we have to realize, you mentioned longevity, economy, we have to realize that this is not just a challenge. It's a huge opportunity. Only in a world in which ageism was so prevalent would a massive population with a high concentration of the wealth of a country, and again, this is not just true in the United States, true across the world, only in a time of ageism would that be considered a burden. In any other time it would be considered a market. And what that means is opportunity for products and services and innovations that can drive a future economy, not just good for old people, terrific for young people who were innovative and creative and thinking in new ways about new uses of technology, digital tools, new types of housing and the like. So we shouldn't be crying in our soup over this. What we should be doing is realizing it's a reality. The world is simply going to look older in the years to come. Not just the planet, but the people on it, and adapt in ways that create opportunity for all of us. 

Ric Edelman: And I'm convinced that that potential reality is quite within our grasp. And with folks like you, Paul Irving, helping to provide that leadership, I am more and more optimistic. Thanks for joining us. Paul Irving, who is the senior advisor of the Milken Institute and former chair of its Center for the Future of Aging, here on the Truth About Your Future. Paul, thank you so much.

Paul Irving: Ric, such a pleasure. Great seeing you again. Congrats on the pod and thank you for all the really good work you've done in this area as well. We appreciate it. 

Ric Edelman: Let me change topics now. Even though bitcoin's been around for almost 15 years, there's still no spot Bitcoin ETF. That could all change any day now. I expect the SEC to approve these ETFs at any time. Do you know how to answer your clients questions about bitcoin? With these ETFs coming, you can't afford to wait. You need to get the knowledge you need right now about crypto, so you're prepared and ready to help your clients. When these ETFs enter the market, your clients are going to call you asking you for your opinion. You need to show that you have that knowledge, and the best way for you to do it is to get your CDBA designation. Become Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets. It's offered by DACFP, my sister company, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. Its online self-study self-paced and listed in Finra's database of professional designations. Just like the CFP®, CFA, CLU, ChFC.

You need to serve your clients. You need to prepare and build your practice for the future, and the CBDA designation helps you do both. Enroll today and get your CBDA designation. The link is in the show notes. 

Ric Edelman: Let me share with you a term that you come across in the world of crypto. Last week I told you what a public key is. Today, I'll tell you what a private key is. Well, if your email address is for the public, for you to distribute so people can send you emails, your password is private. That's how you secure and protect your email. It's how you get into your email account. That's what a private key is for crypto. It's your password so that only you can get into your crypto wallet so that you can see your coins and you can send them to other people whenever you wish. Public key is like an email address. Private key is like your password. Really that simple. 

Ric Edelman: That's it for today. You know, the holiday season can cause a lot of stress and strain. Here's how you can get through it all. Listen to my wife Jean's podcast, Self-Care with Jean Edelman. Her weekly tips can be really helpful this time of year. Her new episode came out yesterday. You can listen to Jean wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy the weekend! See you Monday! 

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