Who, Why & What

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome to the very first episode of You. Still Have Time. I'm Hope, and I'm Harold. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you'll like what you hear and that you'll come back and visit us. For each new podcast, we thought we'd start off by just giving you some brief facts about who we are and then move on to why we decided to do this podcast in the first place.

We are both in our seventies. We are married to each other. He's so lucky. We are parents and grandparents, and we are both retired. I've been retired for almost 18 years, and I've been retired for 11 years now, and we've learned a lot, not just about retirement, but about aging in general. In no way do we consider ourselves experts on these subjects, but we've learned a number of things and we're always looking to learn more.

You'll learn more about us as things proceed. To get to why we began this podcast. This was really Harold's idea. So I'm gonna turn it over to him and let him tell you all about why he thought of creating. You still have time. I am an avid podcast listener. I listen to podcasts every day, multiple podcasts, every day.

And one thing I noticed was that there were very few podcasts that dealt with issues. Pertaining to people of a certain age. There are podcasts about how to raise your children, how to get a promotion, how to save money for the future, how to run faster and jump higher. But there were very few podcasts dealing with issues that were specific to people of a certain age.

So I thought I would listen and try to, I would try to find a podcast and I did a search. And I couldn't find any until I ran into Bill Monty's Guide to Getting Older, a podcast just as it says in his name, specifically dealing with issues for older people. I will leave a link to his podcast in the show notes.

His podcast really dealt with kind the type of issues I was interested in. He dealt with Social Security, how to reply for Social Security. I. How to get deals on hearing aids, the all you know, just issues that we deal with. And by the way, I reached out to Bill on a couple of occasions and he actually had me on his podcast as a guest.

I'll leave a link to that in the show notes, assuming I could figure that out. But anyway, that is why I decided this would be a great idea. Uh, to, to have to create a podcast. And I knew I couldn't do it about myself because, you know, I don't feel like hearing myself talk all alone. So I've invited my wife and she has a, you know, well, yeah, well, yeah.

He invited his wife because, you know, he can't talk enough. No, not, we, we, we both needed each other to sort of serve as a break for, you know, this podcast not being four days long. Anyway, we, um, we hope one of the goals of the podcast is to build community among older people, and that doesn't mean that you have to be, you know, over 60 to listen to this podcast.

In fact, I hope that younger people will actually, I. Um, stumble upon this podcast and find it, um, informational for themselves, how to build their lives into their older years and to share it with, you know, their parents and, and other family members who may be in a certain age group. But one of the things we wanted to address in this first podcast were to dispel some myths about what it's like getting older.

Um, and one of them is that, uh, older adults can't learn new things. Now, I don't know about you, but I learn something new every day. Some things I don't wanna learn, but I learn something new every day. And, and, and I think that what, what perpetuates this myth is that we often, we, we, we expect that we can learn things at the same pace that we used to.

I mean, I know for myself. I have to read a passage in a book, for instance, a couple times before it sinks in. But it does sink in. And as we, we want to dispel this myth because we don't want old people buying into old people. People like us, old people, I often say that, and they're like old people who you talking to?

Um, but we don't want us to buy into this. We can learn as long as we, as long as we're alive, we can still learn. Yeah. Because once we buy into that myth, things sort of stop. Um, if you've listened to the trailer for this podcast, you heard that we are going to deal with issues like health and technology.

Um. Building community, which is one of the things we really hope to do with the podcast, but it stops us. If you believe that you can't learn new things, then you know everything is frustrating. Everything is new. I always say I'm older now. I don't have a lot of time left. So anything that's a time saver for me, I'm going to explore.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm gonna have a TikTok page and you know, showing me dancing. Nobody wants to see that. But I do want to learn those things that can help me live a better life. Absolutely. Absolutely. We, I, I don't know if many people remember, there was a time when Social Security used to send out a regular check.

They stopped doing that. And you know what? You had to learn how to get access your money electronically and, you know, or things like epass. I mean, we used to know people who didn't have an easy passing and every time you have to wait online to get to the toll booth. No, no, no. I am going, it might not be, it might not happen as quickly as for other people, but we need to learn and yes, we want to dispel and step on that myth about old people can't learn new things.

Absolutely. And. It's, and while as you get older, I mean, one of, one of the things, um, they say is that you're going to feel lonely and isolated or that you're gonna fall into depression. And certainly that is possible, but I. We hope to encourage people to continue to build community. Certainly as we get older, we do experience more loss.

I have a friend who said, her mother once said that she buys sympathy cards by the box because so many of the people that she grew up with and siblings and other family members were passing away. Now that's just a fact of life, but while we're still here. We can be in community with people of all ages and learn from people and enjoy life.

And that's what we really hope to encourage people to do with this podcast. While I was doing the research for this podcast and when I, you know, when I first thought about doing the podcast, I didn't think I had to research stuff, but yeah, I'm, I'm researching things and I came thought you knew everything.

Yeah. Well, no, I didn't. Anyway. Um. I came across a Ready for Retirement podcast hosted by James Knoll. He's a certified financial planner, and, uh, he talked about some of the biggest regrets that he saw, or biggest regrets that he encountered, and they weren't about money, because usually money when it comes to retirement, money's the elephant in the room.

But he said most of the regrets were about meaning. Yes. One of the things he mentions is that too many times, too often, people are retiring from something but never towards something. I. And I know Harold and I have discussed as we've, you know, as we've said, we've both been retired for a while, and when we retired it was like, oh wow, yay.

No more work. But never really putting into any concentrated thought about what were we going to be doing after we retire. I know my big thing was I was going to organize my closet. Um, still has, and it's still not organized yet. I was gonna say that. Okay. Anyway. Um, so, um, I think that these sort of regrets and, and Canola's idea that, that these regrets were more about meaning than, you know, concrete things like, um, neglecting your health men.

We wait until something happens and, and then we go to the doctor. You are now retired or you're gonna soon to be retired, you have no excuse not to make those doctor's appointments. You don't have no excuse to avoid things like colonoscopies. You know how many people do? I know they're in their seventies and they have not had their first colonoscopy.

It's painless. I mean, other than drinking that stuff, but I. You can't wait. You can't wait. I say the reason you retire is so, so that you can make your doctor's appointments because we all know, I think, how difficult that can be these days. And lastly, you know, finding purpose for your life and also building community.

I mentioned this earlier, uh, we cannot isolate ourselves on purpose just because, uh, you don't know people. Maybe, you know, your best friend passed away or lives further away and, and you can't communicate with them. First of all, there are ways of communicating with people without actually being face to face.

So. But it involves some technology. It involves some technology. And one of the things we wanna do here is kind of reduce that fear of technology, that fear of, oh, I don't know how to do this. And there's somebody you know who knows how to do it. And all you have to do is ask. And so many senior centers and so many communities offer classes on technology.

So seek those out. Don't isolate yourself. And the elephant in the room when it comes to retirement or whether you are thinking about retirement or you're in retirement is money. Canole found that being too afraid to spend your money is a tool to live, not something to hoard while life passes you by.

This is something that I think we really need to consider. You can't take it with you. Now, I'm not saying that you need to spend all your money, your children's inheritance. But similarly, they're gonna spend it. They're gonna spend, they're, let me, let me just say you are going, yes. We all want to leave something.

Hopefully we have the resources to be able to leave something for our children and our grandchildren. But that doesn't mean that you should sacrifice your life for that they will be able to take care of themselves. Yes, I'm sure you did a great job raising your children. So don't neglect yourself whether you have a little bit of resources or a whole lot, and certainly those of you with a whole lot have no excuse.

But even if you have a a little bit, take time to treat yourself sometimes. Be kind to yourself. We thank you again for joining us and we hope that you like what you heard and will join us again. Before we go, we have a couple of requests. The first is if you have ideas for future topics or guest suggestions, please send them to us at info at you still have time.net.

The second is to please rate and review the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. Every review helps new listeners find us and helps us to improve what we do. And make sure to follow the, you still have time page on Facebook. Lastly, something to think about, is there something you've always wanted to do?

Were never able to do it. Remember, you still have time. Thanks for joining us. See you soon. Bye-bye.