Episode 70 – Finding Purpose in Later Life with Tony Watts OBE
Episode 70 – Finding Purpose in Later Life with Tony Watts OBE
A special guest interview with Tony Watts OBE, director at EngAgeNet and author of The Midlife Review Book. Tony is an advocate for the elderly from producing many publications to directly informing the government on their issues. In this episode the guys chat about what retirement can mean, finding purpose in later life and how employers can work with employees for a smooth transition. As ever we have a brilliant Bages Behavioural Bias and a terrific #tightasstommo money saving tip for you in this practically perfect podcast!
Welcomes & Introductions
What is today’s podcast all about?
- A chat with Tony Watts OBE exploring how we can find purpose and wellbeing in our later years.
- Link to Tony’s book: The Midlife Review
Bage’s Biases
Every episode , Behavioural Finance expert, Neil Bage, is going to be giving us his money behavioural tips. We are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have biases built into us from our experiences through life. We will keep hearing from Neil to help us recognise some of these behavioural biases and hopefully lead us to making better financial decisions.
– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk
– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability
– Link to BeIQ | Beam App
This episode – The endowment effect.
Chris and Producer Tommo share examples of the endowment effect they see through their work.
#TightAssTommo
Featuring ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’, discounts
on fancy groceries and the less said about Producer Tommo’s dating tips the
better 
In a bold move #tightasstommo shares a story about spending money for your wellbeing.
Interview with Tony Watts, OBE
Tony is a director at EngAgeNet
Tony talks about the work he has been doing for elder people over the years, that has resulted in a certain award.
How a cat in Clifton led to editing a newspaper for older people in Bristol?!
- Editing lead to campaigning and trying to work out how to make later life better.
- This lead to talking directly to the government to feed ideas into how to make policy more effective.
How Tony’s OBE has enabled him with his work.
Tony defines what a better later life means.
There’s no one size fits all
Why it is no good waiting until the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before you start planning retirement or later life
How priorities in life start to change
How to think making the most of the last 20/30 years of your life. Working together with
- your finances
- your relationships
- your health
- your purpose in life.
The retirement clock of doom
The last thing you should think about doing when you retire is putting your feet up.
Tony Watts, OBE
Later Life Agenda – Gives you a digest of all the news affecting older people every day. It brings together news stories and features from all around the world about later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets Tony out of bed in the morning and also keeps him current.
Life is long, if you know how to use it.
Seneca
Say yes to everything and see what happens.
Having a young brain v having an old brain
Second Bite of the Cherry – Tim Drake
If you’re going to be equipped to deal with life – you have to be equipped to adapt.
Learning to play a new musical instrument
A deeper look at what Tony’s book, The Midlife Review, is all about
How intergenerational workforces was the inspiration behind the book
How do you keep retraining for the changes that are ahead?
The Financial Audit –
- If you could afford to retire
- When could afford to retire
- When you could afford to start phasing your work commitments down
- And then put in a financial plan that fits around your life ambitions and your personal ambitions
- Alongside a health audit
A Clear Path to Achieve Identifiable Objectives – as you’re thinking about retirement and/or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear path to identifiable objectives
A regular review of your objectives and why they need to be mapped out –
- What’s your health objective?
- What’s your your financial objective?
- What’s your personal relationship objective?
Success in getting other companies to look at helping their older employees look at this?
Could the younger generation be moving job every couple of years, because there’s a disconnect between what owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want?
Trying to find a job that will align with what you want out of life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from.
The intergenerational workforce – looking at the motivations for each generation
What financial planning is all about – It’s not a one size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you.
Conclusions from the guys
Retirement doesn’t mean ‘retirement’ anymore.
When working you have lots of social relationships through your work, social contact. When you retire, a lot of that will stop. So how are you going to replace it?
The key thing – purpose
Just because you might switch off the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops.
Davids hitchhiking story
Click here for more information on the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing
Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners?
If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk
If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop
Transcribe of the Podcast Script:
(scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode)
David
Hello, everybody and welcome to another one in our long running series of financial wellbeing podcasts where three of us get together and waffle on about how money can increase your wellbeing. My waffling name is David Lloyd, I’m an actor, a broadcaster, and a writer, and I’m here to act as mediator, while the two people around me talk with more knowledge and purpose that I have about financial matters. And one of those is Chris Budd. Chris, tell us about you.
Chris
Good morning. So I wrote the financial wellbeing book, I’m chair of the initiative for financial well being but my day job I help companies to succession, through something called an employee ownership trust, having done the same thing myself with Ovation Finance. And it’s been really quiet over the summer, because not many business owners have been thinking about that. But it’s got really busy over the last few months. So yeah, that’s actually taking up a lot of my time again, I’m pleased to say,
David
Great, another part of our terrific triumvirate is Tom Morris, Tommo, tell us about you.
Producer Tommo
I’m just waiting to hear the baby crying stop.
Chris
Well no, its alright
David
My dogs barking now. So let me just go . . .
Chris
This is this is not supposed to be highly professional. Is it?
Producer Tommo
I mean, this is part of the charm, isn’t it?
Chris
Yeah.
David
Right, so Tommo . . .
Producer Tommo
You’re such a wordsmith, David. Never ceases to amaze me – triumvirate. It’s such a wonderful word. I’m. Yes. Far too rubbish with words to come up with, trio. Yes, I am a Chartered Financial Planner and director at Ovation Finance, who kindly sponsor this podcast. I’m not sure if you can pick up on my microphone. I have a relatively newborn child. So you may hear in the background. I am a father of two now, which is all very exciting. So if you do hear a few wails in the background, don’t don’t be too alarmed. It’s just what newborns do. Right. But yeah, I’m, I’m very good. I’m very good. still recording this during about what are we locked down mark two about to go into tier three is we’re all based in Bristol. But all considering I feel very blessed to be here today. And I’m really looking forward to this pod.
David
Excellent. So am I so Chris, we’re all looking forward to it. What are we going to be talking about today?
Chris
We’re going to be hearing from a chap called Tony Watts, OBE, and Tony has been for many years, activist if you like for older the people, so you David.
David
I do indeed have some comments on that, but I’ll save those for later.
Chris
Good idea. Sorry, that was a bit rude. I didn’t mean it though. We love you really.
David
Before we do that, let’s look at the first of all regular features. Bages Behavioural Biases. Were an old friend of the podcast, behavioural finance expert, Neil Bage, gives us his one minute introduction to a different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money. What’s this bias about, Chris?
Chris
This week, we’re hearing from Neil about the endowment effect.
Neil Bage
The endowment effect. Have you ever gone to sell something that you own only to have the person who is the potential buyer offering you way less than you want, you go to other people, and even they offer you less than you think the item is worth. If this sounds remotely like something you’ve experienced, you’ve fallen for the endowment effect. In short, the endowment effect is where we overvalue something we own, regardless of its real market value, which of course is objective. And people will tend to believe through this feeling of ownership that what we have, what they have, what they own is better than anybody else’s, or my car, my house, are all better than everybody else’s. And it’s this biassed view of the world that can lead us to making decisions that may not end up being the best decisions that we’ve ever made. So the next time you’re on eBay, trying to sell a pair of headphones that you’ve never used. Remember that the attachment that you have to them, everyone else will value at zero. In that situation, take a step back and ask yourself, if I didn’t own this, what would I be willing to pay for it? Even that one simple step can potentially knock you out of the grasp of the endowment effect. And the sooner you recognise this, the sooner you will feel liberated.
Chris
So there’s a very important relevance here with with what I was mentioning, if you’d like my day job, the fact that I help business owners to exit and sell their businesses, because business owners will very often overvalue their own business, they think it’s worth more than what somebody else wants to pay for it. And so the question I always ask business owner is how much do you need to sell your business for? And they always give me an amount is worth this or that. But that’s not the question. The question is what do you need. So the first step for anybody who’s thinking of selling their business is to get financial planning. Find out how much you actually need for the business. And then that will hopefully get rid of that counteracts the endowment effect, and give you a much more realistic figure that you can then work from good financial well being link there.
Producer Tommo
Yeah, I think that’s a terrific example, and naturally come across this a fair amount as we’re in similar, well we’re in the same field. Chris, we work work work at Ovation, or you certainly had more of an involvement in that since you moved on to your employee ownership side of things. So you definitely see a lot of that. I think another example of where I see it, is inherited assets, it’s there is almost this extra connection with something because somebody who they loved hold on to something. So it must be really good to have it, even though it is really the wrong thing for them to keep in their lives, whether it be a house they’ve inherited, which is miles away, but for some reason they want to keep it, rent it or just leave it dormant because it was their loved ones and everyone has investments, they inherit an investment portfolio that is completely wrong for their needs, but find it very difficult to make any changes to it. Because of this endowment effect. It’s it’s very powerful.
David
The ability to be objective, of course, it’s something that’s very difficult. We talk about, we’ve talked many times on these podcasts about knowing ourselves, or being aware of who you really are. And certainly, my experience of that, as a writer of 35 years now is that when I first started writing, every word of every script, or whatever that I’d written, as far as I was concerned was was the best thing that could ever have been written by anybody. And sometimes that may have been true, but often it wasn’t. And, and therefore the thing that I have learned over a long career is the ability to step back and be objective and say, Yep, that’s good. I think that’s gonna work. But actually, you know what, I don’t think that is as good as it could be. And I could work on it. And that’s very difficult when you have an emotional attachment to the work that you’re doing.
Chris
And I think it’s worth also just zooming out a little bit here, to just remind us of why we get Neil to tell us about all of these individual behavioural biases, because we are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have all of these biases built into us from our experiences through life. And so recognising some of these behavioural biases will hopefully lead to us making better financial decisions. So that’s why we keep hearing from Neil and we will get more from him very grateful to him. And his company B IQ for what they’re doing that we should probably mention his app. Because you can do this for free, you can use his app called Beam – B E A M, it’s currently on iPhone only. But very soon, it will be on all formats. And you can play some games. And those games will then reveal your own behavioural biases. And so whether you have strong endowment effect or whether you are very susceptible to anchoring or what have you, Ovation has been using it quite a few years now. We’ve become trialling it it’s now available for everybody and you can use it for free and it’s a fascinating, it’s good fun to do. But the outcome is absolutely fascinating and will hopefully lead to you making better financial decisions.
David
Excellent. Thanks for that, Chris. Right. Let’s move on then to the next in our regular features, which is Tight Ass Tommo. And regular listeners, the podcast will know that this feature started or many, many episodes ago where our producer Tommo took Chris and another colleague out to lunch, persuaded them to have a particular chicken dinner. And it turned out that this was one that he had a voucher for that he was able to get very, very cheaply. Thus the legend Tight Ass Tommo was born.
Chris
And of course the expression Winner winner chicken dinner.
David
Fantastic. So before we come on to Tommo’s tip, Chris, if you’ve got anything for us today,
Chris
Just a real quickie actually a little name check for a local shop. And I’m sure David you use called Broccoli Stores on A370 just outside Backwell, where my son works and because he works there, we get 20% off. That’s my tip. Get your son to go and work at Broccoli Stores get 20% off lovely food.
David
That’s great advice, Chris. So Tommo, come on. Give us your big tip for the day. We’re itching to hear it.
Producer Tommo
Well. Hard one to follow that one. Just on Chris’s topic. I do do have some clients who work at a private school. No, not the only reason they work there but then get something like 50% discount on their child’s tuition fees. So yeah, get that out there. I once dated lady who worked for House of Fraser and got myself a 50% discount. So there you go.
Chris
You stopped going out with her shortly afterwards?
Producer Tommo
As soon as I got the discount, I mean, this was a long time ago. This is this is school aged Tom who couldn’t afford a pair of jeans so you know . . .
Chris
The legend of Tight Ass Tommo really is going to live on, he actually went out with a girl just to get a discount at House of Fraser.
Producer Tommo
Quite, less said about that, the better. And so my tip is one that I’ve mentioned before. And it’s just to reiterate the importance of this. And it was an experience that I had very recently. So two good friends of mine, fellow financial planners, imagine how riveting the conversations are, Rohan Sivajoti and Rich Ellis. We like whiskey. And we thought you know what, we’ve not had a catch up in a while. Why don’t we jump on a Zoom call, grab a glass of whiskey at the end of the day and just have a chip like Yeah, sure. Why not? We turn up Rohan had this glass tea cup for his whiskey. And I said, What are you doing, man? You’re a respectable business owner. What on earth? Are you doing not drinking out of a proper whiskey glass? He said, why is this all I’ve got? Okay, okay. Well, a couple of days later, he gets a delivery. And he sends his picture and Rich had decided, I’m going to buy Rohan a really nice set of whiskey glasses. It arrived Rohan was over the moon. I’m sure it gave Rich a great boost of wellbeing knowing that he was helping someone. I mean, I’m kicking myself that I wasn’t quick enough on the draw, I mean, how tight does that make me look? But the point is Rich, I’m sure is getting a huge amount of well being on spending money on others, the person who receives the gift gets a real boost knowing somebody’s thinking of them. And the person paying for the gift has a boost to their own well being. So there’s my tip, spend money on others. Heck, it could be time as well.
David
That’s a great tip and and chatting as I am with two good old friends here, I just like to point out that my car is a bit decrepit now, won’t last much longer.
Producer Tommo
There’s limits to this, this story, I’m sure, this example.
Chris
Well, did you hear the George Clooney story? So George Clooney was, he he got paid to do a film ridiculous amount of money like $14 million, obviously, and he took it out in cash. And he then got a driver, I think they took like a postal delivery van or something instead make it look inconspicuous, and took bundles of cash, a million dollar bundles and went round a load of his friends that had helped him along the way and gave them a million dollars in cash each. And obviously he’s gonna get used wellbeing for that they’re gonna get there is a little bit of me that thinks that’s a little bit gauche. Just give him a check or give it to them in cash. But what a great moment that must have been to walk in and say ‘There you go, mate’. Bam, there’s a million dollars in cash. Thanks for all your help.
Producer Tommo
Yeah
David
That is the stuff of dreams. And I can imagine that obviously, it would be great for somebody to just walk in and give you that, but I’m sure that gave him a huge amount, he comes across as being a pretty decent guy anyway, and I’m sure that gave him a huge amount of pleasure to be able to repay those people that he thought had supported him. And clearly he’s working in an industry where you can get paid, you know, ludicrous amounts of money, so why not give a little bit of it back? Well done George. Lets move on. Thank you for that Tommo. Chris, what’s the interview about today? And who’s it with?
Chris
So today we are going to hear from Tony Watts OBE. Tony is a director at a place called Engage Net, also a chair of the Southwest Alliance on Ageing director of Retire Easy as a copywriter, he ran a newspaper, what he called a newspaper called the Mature Times for many, many years. He’s been active in elderly issues for a long, long, long, long time. He’s also really nice guy and into his blues. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Tony Watts.
Chris
Tony, thanks for joining us in the podcast.
Tony Watts
Welcome.
Chris
Do you want to start off by just, you and I have known each other a little while now we. . .
Tony Watts
Too long some might say.
Chris
You or me, yes. And occasionally we bump into each other at blues gigs. So we might talk about the blues but we should probably talk about money and happiness because it is the point of this. Tell us about the work that you’ve been doing for elder people over the years, it has resulted in a certain award.
Tony Watts
Okay, well, it’s all started by accident. I won’t give you the long version, which begins with me accidentally running over a cat in Clifton. But it led on for me to the person knocked on the door ended up doing a big marketing campaign for the Isle of Wight. And that was aimed at older people and the only publication that back in the mid 80s. And the only publication I could find at that time to to address older people and connect with them was a publication that was based in Bristol called Golden Age, and is based in Victoria Street in Albert House, curiously, and I ended up in another series of accidents being asked to edit it. The publishers asked had I ever edited a newspaper before and I lied. I’ve got the gig basically. So I . . .
Chris
Always say yes, and work out the detail later. Yeah. I like it.
Tony Watts
. . . the truth of it. So I ended up publishing what was then the very first publication for older people. And it’s a newspaper, monthly newspaper. And that went fairly well. And that sort of morphed over the years into the first publication, I had a direct involvement financially in setting up this publication called Mature Times. And that was back in the early 90s. And I’d been out doing a group of local papers by then for somebody and I got together with a bunch of people over in Wales. And we set up what was then a fairly adventurous programme of getting a paper together which went out nationally and with regional versions, we looked at all the big issues around retirement. And we were aiming really at the retired person, and we got about 400,000 circulation is a big beast in those days. So I was editing that and really got very involved with the campaign side for later life and trying to work out how you make later life better. And there’s obviously a very interconnected area. And I think people look at how serious single issues and think that’s the solution was not you need to look at finance, housing, health care, or what you do with life. So we tried to focus on all those things that make for a better retirement. And my involvement with that paper sort of ebbs and flows over the years, and I sold my stake in 2010/11. And sort of got pounced upon by people who are representing older people in the government. And they say, well, you know, with your knowledge, would you actually act as a chair for the Southwest forum on ageing, I’ve been doing that ever since. So that acts as, I do that about one, sometimes two days a week, and for quite a few years, we were talking directly to government. We were advising them on new strategies or new bills that were coming forward, giving input from all these feeder groups, a lot of people into how to make legislation and how to make policy more effective. And it wasn’t just about spending more money, it was actually starting from the premise of this fixed pot of money. How do you make that work more effectively. And I got very involved because of my background in doing the comms. So I ended up leading the comms and all that. And then we set up something called the Age Action Alliance. And that brought together lots of people from all around the country, working together on projects to try and, again, make life better for older people. But the most important piece of work probably was I acted as a conduit and deliver the information into the House of Lords on a big report, which came out in 2012, which was called Ready For Ageing, question mark. And the whole report was looking at the way society and government in particular is gearing itself up to the challenges and the opportunities of later life living. And I’ll emphasise that because not just about challenges, people do worry about the downsides of an ageing society. But there are some upsides as well to that. So I ended up saying, given the input, I think that had an influence into the way housing and social care, the health may have been more coordinated, especially health social care. So that ended up unbeknownst to me, obviously, somebody noticed somewhere high up. And I was nominated for an OBE back in 2014, which came as a bit of a surprise, but it’s been a very helpful thing because it enables me to go out, with a few initials after name, sometimes speak at conferences, write articles, and give me a bit more clout when I’m trying to do what I’m trying to do.
Chris
A bit of a door opener?
Tony Watts
It is a door opener. Yeah, it is a door opener that people take slightly more seriously. Not everyone’s bad. I understand that and it’s been cynically used the honour systems over the years since Lloyd George was around so it’s not just theres minus sides as well. But I think it does allow me to speak with slightly more authority on the key issues that matter to me and to older people.
Chris
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say just on that there’s been a big move over the last I don’t know whatever decade couple of decades to make the honour system, at least a large part of it to reward people that deserve rewarding and there’s no doubt you will be one of them. I don’t think we have any, any danger of that. So, there’s a few things in that that were quite interesting. A lot that was interesting. But I just wanted to ask you to define how you would explain what a better later life is.
Chris
So thats really quite a big one that everyone’s coming from a different place and it’s got different ambitions and different life situations, so there’s no one size fits all here. I think it’s about looking at each individual and working out what works best for them what can work best for them. But the key point in all this is there’s no good waiting until the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before we start planning retirement or later life if you have to really go start much earlier than that. And that’s the the one of the things I talked about in the book in a minute but it later life for many people starts I guess in their 50s, often their careers either start to plateau out, or they start to really get to the very top levels. And the priorities in life start to change as well. I mean, you won’t necessarily just bring up young family or just trying to strive to get onto the housing ladder, you’re, you’re looking hopefully at the bigger picture. I’m not sure how you feel about the case, obviously, you’re a bit younger than me, but you start looking at life slightly differently. But you do need to think about how you make the most of the last 20/30 years of your life, and it is I hate to use ‘the last bit’ it is I mean, I’m 67, I’m starting to really focused now on how to make the most of my next 15 years, I guess, if I’m, if I’m lucky. And it’s a matter of working, working together with your finances, your relationships, and your health, and what you how you purpose your life. And I think that’s something that’s really, really significant, and most people drop out of work into some sort of chasm. You see this all the time. I would say with men who’ve been in senior positions, they’ve had fairly high status, they’ve, you know, had authority, they’ve had a purpose in getting up every morning, and suddenly, you know, they’ve got nothing to really hang their life on apart from, you know, the personal relationships. And I think there’s an awful lot of work that can be done between employers and employees, but also, obviously, individuals themselves looking at how they map out those last, those last 15/20/30 years to work out what’s best for them and those around them.
Chris
I think that’s spot on. We see that a lot with Ovation with with clients, elderly clients, elderly, like clients moving into retirement. And we so often you ask somebody see, what’s your plan, and they haven’t really thought about it?
Tony Watts
Yeah
Chris
I just tell one slightly depressing story. But there was one chap who worked for the same company for 45 years. And he had no plans about what he was going to do in retirement. He had a lovely, lovely defined benefit pension scheme, and then spent most of his time looking after the grandkids. And he died after six months of his retirement of a heart attack.
Tony Watts
And well, this used to happen years ago, I remember when back in the Golden Age years I mean, people used to sort of get their clock in those days, I’m not sure when people get clocks these days, it’s bit of a morbid reminder of time ticking, but . . .
Chris
I never thought of that that is quite insensitive.
Tony Watts
Look at that on the on the shelf there, minutes of his grandfather’s clock. But people used to basically come out of retirement having worked really physically hard as well. And the last thing you should think about doing necessarily when you retire is putting your feet up. And I think also there’s the concept of a phased retirement now, which wasn’t there before. And I think you can taper, taper the word work into the word of word of retirement. As I say, I’m 67, I’ve got the luxury of not having to work every day of the week. And I consciously put my most into every day that I might be working on, in the gym, on with my grandchildren, I do my volunteer work, but every day is purposed. And I think you do need to have that, you know, thing functioning in your life when you get up to something every day. I mean, every morning at about seven, eight o’clock, putting a daily newspaper together, which I give a plug to it’s called Later Life Agenda. And it gives you a digest of all the news affecting all the people every day.
Chris
I follow you on Twitter and see it on Twitter quite often.
Tony Watts
It is really important because it basically brings together all the news stories and features from all around the world as well, around later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and also keeps me current. And that’s the other thing about retirement is that you see some people whose lives are so wrapped up in in things that are personal to them, they lose their currency, they lose an understanding of the wider world and that’s why I think still working as I do is great because, you know, as long as I’m able to because I still stay current in terms of understanding how the world is working, especially the world of work.
Chris
Yeah, there’s a comment you made earlier about making the most of the hours and and I carry with me quite a lot the time a little book by the philosopher Seneca called On The Shortness of Life. And then the the line on the front of the page, which just does stay at my thoughts quite a lot as I get older it is ‘life is long, if you know how to use it’. Yeah, which is a great line and I find myself you know, I’m in a position now having sold my business and I’m doing other things I get to choose most of the time, choose what I do. And I’ve had a little principle for a little while of I’ll just say yes to everything and see what happens. And that’s great. It’s actually not about you know that a lot of the time advice is that you know, you’ve got to say no to more things, I think say yes to more things. Yeah, it’s taken me in some very interesting directions, I’m saying no to a few things because it’s getting a bit silly. But it’s not a bad philosophy that says it.
Tony Watts
I agree. And this is half full/half empty life approach, I’d also bring in the concept which comes in to the book of mine that’s having a young brain and an old brain, which is something that that I hadn’t heard of before. But a guy called Tim Drake, who’s written a very good book called Second Bite of the Cherry. I recommend that to anybody who’s thinking about having an encore career or thinking about reinventing themselves after they finish their job, which may not happen at time of their choosing. That’s the other thing people sometimes find themselves out of the role they had voluntarily. But those of us when we were younger, we, we adapt to change, because we have to adapt to change, like life changing on a daily basis. And so many people’s brains start to age 18. And we find it harder and harder to adapt to new situations, and they won’t welcome change 10% of people carry on through life having a young brain. So they actually welcome change, or seek to adapt. And it works well for them. And if you look at where Darwin started, it wasn’t about survival of the fittest, it was survival of those who could adapt to their environment, and were living in a fast moving world. I mean, in my years, I’ve seen so much change, and it’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen next. And if you’re going to be equipped to deal with life, you have to be equipped to adapt. I mean,
Chris
How do you do that, though Tony, how do you get a young brain not an old brain?
Tony Watts
I think you have to sort of do what you said. And that is say yes to more things. And don’t shut the door. Because your frightened of something happening that you might not, you know, be comfortable for you move out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. Try things you haven’t tried before. And I, I’m sat here next to your guitar, by the way. And all through my life, I’ve always wanted to play music, and I guess I couldn’t, not the opportunity as a child and funnel that into my children. I’ve got two children who make a living out of music. And I was I was at a conference recently talking. And it was in the evening. And this lady said to me, what you talk today about adapting and staying young and keep you know et cetera, et cetera. What are you doing? I said, Well, and it’s about what, what new, new thing have you done lately? And I said, well I haven’t done anything new lately if I’m really honest about it? Well, she said, I’m 60 something, about the same age as me, I’ve just taken up the clarinet, why don’t you take up the clarinet. And I said, Okay, then. So back into the last year, I started taking clarinet lessons. And it’s, I’ve suddenly discovers whole new world. And it’s just opened up my mind and my life. And I’m feeling much more fulfilled, it’s rewiring my brain, I think as well which, and is that willingness to actually try something new. Go out of your comfort zone, and be prepared to embarrass yourself even but, but don’t shut them shut the barriers down because it’s not something you’ve done before.
Chris
I having played guitar all my life, taking the guitar to dinner parties and what have you lots and lots of times over the years, people have said, God, I wish I could play the guitar. I wish I could play an instrument. Of course, I’d say well, why don’t you then? Yeah, say, Well, why don’t you? I don’t have the time. And all you need is 10 minutes a day. That’s it. You just don’t watch the telly for 10 minutes. Watch 10 minutes less television and use that 10 minutes, just practising your piece. And if you do that everyday, you’d be amazed how quickly you progress at an instrument. And nobody’s trying to say you’re not gonna be a concert pianist or anything. It’s just fun. Music is fun. So yes, that’s great stuff.
Tony Watts
Yeah, yeah, I’m not being immodest here, but it turns out, I can actually play reasonably well. And I am working towards my ambition of playing Chattanooga Choo Choo. I really want to play jazz in a band now. That’s what I really, I think I’m a couple of years away from that. I’m aiming for that anyway.
Chris
Fantastic. So you’ve mentioned your book, tell us what your books all about. Okay, well, this project started a while ago. I’m sure you’ve heard of a company called Punter Southall by their CEO, a very, very interesting man called Steve Butler. He got in contact as he was writing a book around intergenerational workforces. I gave some input into that, and that books come out and I would recommend that to anybody, any employer out there who is struggling, with the fact that there mix employees is not quite as cohesive as it might be. Because nowadays you have older people staying in work longer, younger people churn through the system quicker, how’d you get a better sort of more cohesive mix inside a business of the generations? How do you make the most of those different talents? So that book came out end of the last year that’s done very well. And, and thats called Manage The Gap. I, commend it highly. But we’ve found that with several is one element in the book, which is the midlife review, which we mentioned what he meant. He mentioned well, but but it’s something I’ve felt very passionate about, and asked him to mention it in the book. And he’s done that. But he said, well, let’s do something more detailed around this. And the midlife review is something that a guy called Steven McNair, started off at least 10, maybe 10 years ago now. And I got involved with it. I work, working to government, basically. So we were asked for input on this. And the idea is that all employees once they reach a certain age and defined age was certainly 50/50 onwards, should we having a sensible conversation with their employer to work out where they go from here? And were they, okay, because what you have at the moment, you’ve got an ageing society, a demographic within the workforce? How do you make the most of those times. How do you keep retraining them for the changes that are ahead? How do you make the most of their talents, when perhaps, they need to be skilling at any one point, because all the skills that we used 20 years ago aren’t necessarily the ones we use now and extrapolate onward. But also, more importantly, companies like Aviva since got involved and a very big way. And they got involved when they thought it’d be nice to do. Have these midlife review projects and watch your employees, our old employees want from their later years. And they suddenly looked at their, their business plan going forward and realised there was a big chunk of them, their workers would be disappearing soon, many of them have got comfortable DB pensions they could leave at time of their choosing. And if they all left because they could leave, they will suddenly have this skills gap, which will be quite frankly, sort of very serious for the business. So they’ve implement, they’re starting to implement this on a regular basis, inviting people in on a no commitment basis, you haven’t got to do it. But they look at their work ambitions and their work restrictions and also their caring responsibilities. Would they prefer to work flexibly would they prefer to actually work two or three days a week or four days a week, because they have caring responsibilities coming up. Would they like to change role into the future. Because sometimes people get locked into a job. And they don’t want to say anything, because they’ll appeared to be unambitious or not be part of the team. But it’s not what they enjoy doing anymore, or they’re finding it too onerous. The starting, starting point of all of this is the financial audit. And you do this on a regular basis Chris with your guys. And you look at individual and say, Well, here you are, you’re actually is when do you want to retire, how much you want to retire on? And what would be comfortable? How do you reach that point? And so doing a financial audit on each individual would tell them if they could afford to retire, when they could afford to retire, when they could afford to start phasing their work commitments down and put in a financial plan that fitted around their life ambitions and their personal ambitions. And alongside that, there’s a there’s a health audit as well. And people should go to either health doctor and check out your health.
Chris
One of the five planks of financial well being is a clear path to achieve identifiable objectives. Yeah, and you know what, I think I’ve probably been a little bit guilty. And if any of our listeners have been as well of thinking a clear path of identifiable objectives tends to be in the wealth creation phase, and the early part of life. But what you’re basically saying, is it mid/later life as you’re thinking about maybe within 10 years of retirement and or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear path to identifiable objectives, don’t you? That’s what your talking about.
Tony Watts
Where the interesting thing where this has moved on from is it was in the beginning, it seems like a one off hit, you know, you sat down with your employer and did it and there was your mapped out next 10/15 years? No, this should be a regular review. But there’s just personal circumstances, constantly changing. The company’s circumstances are constantly changing. And it does need to have an honest conversation. And sometimes, maybe you have a buffer between a broker who actually conducts these conversations. And that’s another possibility. But, But health is one of them. Because people often disregard their health in their middle ears. It’s up, you know, you’re working all the hours, you’re running around, looking after the kids. And so you have this gap. I see this, I’m in the gym quite a lot now because I’ve got time to do it and got younger people in there. And you’ve got people my age and beyond. Very few people are in there and those middle years and they really should be focusing on making sure you’ve got your body sorted out for the next 10/20/30 years as well. And its mental well being as well as mental health issue. Some of you understand, I know that. But your objectives, I think, look at your objectives again, what’s your health objective? What’s your, you know, your financial objective? What’s your personal relationship objective? All these things need to be mapped out, I think.
Chris
And actually, if you’ll forgive me for going slightly on a tangent, this is the work that I do on employee ownership. One of the things that we talk about there is owners or business owners, small business owners should do with their key employees have a combined career and financial plan. Yeah, you sit down together, and you say, right, what do you want your future to look like? Let’s see how, what the business needs from you put the two together, see what you could get paid, see what you could afford, and come up with a combined career and financial plan. I’ve always thought of that as like a, you know, an owner with his senior management team, that that kind of thing. But the idea of doing that in a big corporate, I mean, that’s fantastic. That’s wonderful that the likes of Aviva are doing this. Have you had success in getting other companies to, to look at this?
Tony Watts
It’s, it’s obviously this is very much pilot stage. Business in the Community, the organisation that sort of piloted this and have been promoting it, and they, they’ve got a lot of influence out there. What has happened since then, is that the government itself, thinks this is a great idea, because they want people to be working for longer and being economically active for longer. And they also want people to be less dependent, in terms of health. So they think this is a great idea, but they’re leaving it to the system to work its way out. And other people are looking at it and Legal & General for instance did a pilot on it and people like Mercer have been looking at it as well. But it hasn’t really, really taken off. He I think it sounds like you’re doing a large part of this work, you’re not doing it in quite the same way Chris.
Chris
Well, I’m now thinking that people who have business in the community that could be part of our financial well being the initiative of financial wellbeing, we can we can spread the word on this, I think this is a lovely idea. And this is, you know, obviously, your book is part of this as well, which is going to be out . .
Chris
Its called Midlife Review Wealth, Working Wellbeing. Myself and Steve Butler, are co-authors. But what we do in there is map out why employers should look at this quite seriously, why employee, you should look at it quite seriously. And then look at the mechanisms for making it happen. And we picked on the ways that, different ways people try to exit and the conclusion we came to again is no one size fits all. If you’re a small company, it’s not the same as Aviva looking at this issue, because you’ve got different structures and different and different barriers sometimes to to making this work. And but it I think there’s huge advantages to any employer to look more holistically at their workforce and think well, okay, I’m, I’m chugging along quite nicely in there. But where will I be in five years time? Where will my workforce be? What, what will constitute, what ages will there be?
Chris
Yeah, it’s just good business planning Tony isn’t it, sensible business planning.
Tony Watts
It is, an essential business plan, I’m not sure where it’s a part of every business plan, you look at your, your markets, you look at your products or services, you aren’t necessarily looking at the workforce, they’re gonna service that and how you need to train these people up to to perform those new roles, and where they’re going to come from. As I mentioned before, younger people aren’t necessarily going to be as easy to recruit as perhaps you might think, because these guys don’t hang around these days, that one two years is often the most, some people will stay in the job. They’re looking for the next career move, and you need to either incentivize them as you’re talking about, or be prepared to provide lots more incentives for older people to stay in the workforce.
Chris
What you’ve just said there Tony totally fits right into a bit of a bee in my bonnet, if I may, just for a second. The idea of, of the younger generation moving job every couple of years, I’ve got a really strong belief that the reason for that isn’t because they’re somehow flightier, than our generation. I think it’s because there’s a disconnect between what owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want. Because we’re Thatcher’s children, we grew up in Thatcher years, and we see success in financial terms. And a lot of the bosses and owners and the senior management of corporates, they are all also Thatcher’s children and see success in financial terms. But millennials and the younger generation, they don’t tend to they’re far more interested in purpose, all the climate change stuff going on, they don’t even know if there’s gonna be a life on the planet in 30/40 years time. So they’re much more interested in purpose. So I just think that they’re moving around so often not because they want career moves necessarily, but because they’re trying to find a job that will align with what they want out of life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from.
Tony Watts
Well I think back to the book I mentioned earlier on the intergenerational workforce, that explores that in detail, it looks at the motivations for each generation, you can’t be too bored, obviously, Millennials don’t think the same way as we do. They’re looking for work for somebody they can really believe in was years ago, you’d happily work for a tobacco company or an oil company was these guys will look askance at working for someone who’s Corporate values may not align with their own. I think also looking at the workplace, and one of the things I write about is property, business property. And the places that people work are having to change because people don’t want to work in the same sort of workplaces, they want to work in more collaborative situations. They don’t want to sit at desks on their own, where there’s no connection between them and the outside world. They want to work from home more often, so they can have a better work/life balance. And employers need to understand that’s what will drive that generation of people and keep/retain them. Whereas it may be slightly different for people of you know, the people in the 40s and 50s, and possibly 60s who will look at work in quite a different sort of way, neither wrong or right, you simply need to look at it as motivation. So employee benefits, employee motivation, needs to be geared towards the individual, rather than having a one size fits all.
Chris Budd
Yeah, well there’s a perfect summary of what financial wellbeing and what financial planning is all about. It’s not a one size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you. Tony thank you for that. Thank you for joining us on the Podcast. We will put lots of information about your book and other resources in the shownotes. Thanks very much for you time, really appreciate it.
Tony Watts
Nice to chat with you, we must meet up sometime.
David
Well fascinating interview that was. I found Tony a really interesting character and I have to say Chris I’m just going to give you a little plug I thought that was a really good interview as well I thought knew your team some really interesting stuff out the way. Now I can obviously identify I think with a lot of what Tony says I’m just a couple of years younger than him. You know, and I’m at a similar stage in my life when I’m talking about, as he identified the challenges and opportunities of later life living and the one thing that he said that really resonated to me. You know it’s time now to think about how you make the most of the last 15/20 years of your life, and putting it bluntly, you know, that’s probably where I’m at now in my life. I still think of myself as being, like everybody has a locked in age, mines 28, I still think I am. But I’m not, I’m 65 and statistically, I actually look this up the other day, I typed in my age my demographics and all of that to find out when I was likely to die, and it’s probably 83. I’ve got 18 years to go. So, life for me now is less about an endless series of possibilities and ambitions and goals that I want to achieve. It’s how can I make the most of my life. While I’ve still got my health, where I’ve got, you know, relatively good amount of money, in which to enjoy myself and a partner who I’m very happy with. How can I get through the rest of my life. Hopefully avoiding getting ill and, and enjoying myself as much as I could. I love the story about, about the fact that, you know, people used to get a retired clock. And he always found that a morbid reminder of time ticking away, and that’s certainly something that I’ve never been interested in. He talked as well about the, the last thing to think about on retirement is putting your feet up. And certainly that’s always been my attitude to life anyway, you know, although I am now on the cusp, I’m still very much working, writing for doctors, writing another novel. But I’m doing it less now because I have to I’m doing it now because I want to. And in between those times when I’m sitting down working, I’m looking at how I can actually get out there and enjoy myself. So, I’m doing more gardening I got. I run 4k three times a week. So, as he says we should be looking, people of our age to welcome change, and seek to adapt and that’s always been my philosophy in life anyway. And it was great to hear somebody else voicing that in such a clear way.
Chris Budd
I think his take on retirement, retirement doesn’t mean retirement anymore. It’s, you don’t just stop work. There’s an Aegon survey that I’ve heard recently where something like 85% of people continue to do some form of work in retirement. Well, then they’re not retired are they, you know because they’re still working. They’re just doing a different type of work, maybe something they want to do or maybe it’s charity or voluntary. So, taking time with your financial planner to say, not just my retirement age is a certain age but what are you actually going to do? What will life look like? I heard a really good tip on this recently. And I’m really annoyed I can’t remember the financial planner who said it, so my apologies if he’s listening, but it was what he says to his clients is, at the moment you have lots of social relationships through your work, social contact, when you retire, a lot of that will stop. So how are you going to replace it? I think that’s a really good tip to ask.
Producer Tommo
Are you sure it wasn’t me?
Chris
Sorry, Tom Morris, the other day said . . .
Producer Tommo
This is exactly the conversation that, that I have with, with people if I think about that transition. I just will mention those that I find, from my experience, those that are at your stage of life David that it’s so tangible for them I feel as though they are so focused on wanting to get this right, which does make the coaching conversations that much richer and we can get a lot deeper because of that, from my personal experience. But yeah, there are, there is a key thing here. That purpose we talked about in the last episode that thing that gets us up out of bed is often linked to our, the thing that pays you know pays the bills or careers, you know if you if you’ve got a career for the purpose, then great. But just because you might switch off the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops. A career could mean an all manner of things. I think the traditional mindset of what work is, is changing, and how we fill our time. And then the social interactions is just so important, how we are getting those. And I would argue that people are feeling that importance right now. During 2020, where a lot of those interactions are being turned off for them.
David
There’s a story, and I may well have told this on a previous podcast, in which case, I apologize, I think it’s is right for this moment. I remember when I was a young man. I was hitchhiking from up north where my parents lived down to London and I got given a lift though a guy, his name was Bill. And he was 80. And he was from the West Midlands and we were driving down and he was a really interesting engaging guy. And he worked for, at the age of 80, as a volunteer for Age Concern. I remember him saying to me he said, the thing is he said, I love to work with the old people, because I like to look after the old people, this is an 80 year old man telling me this story. And I remember he said when I retired one of the last things I wanted to do was sit on a wall in me slippers, watching the world go by, I wanted to get out there and make a difference. And that’s always stuck with me. And that’s always been my ambition for my retirement, which is, as Chris says, is only going to be semi-retirement anyway. The last thing I want to do is sit on a wall and watch the world go by. And I thought Tony summed that up very well, he said there are so many people often, men but for women as well, whose whole life is channelled into their work. And then all of a sudden they find that’s not there anymore. They’re spending time at home with a partner that they perhaps don’t know very well because they have always been out of work and may not actually like that much either. And therefore, I think it’s pretty important to have good sense of purpose in you into that later part of your life. Okay, so that’s a very interesting chat we’ve had there. Thanks as ever to Chris, and to Tom for their contributions, and I hope you’ll join us again next time we do another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.