Unedited Transcript:

Mark Struthers (00:00.194)

Welcome to the Healthy and Wealthy Retirement, where your certified retirement counselor Mark Struthers takes a holistic approach to retirement. Going beyond finances and embracing holistic well-being, this YouTube channel will address not just the financial part of retirement, but also the social, the physical, and the emotional parts of retirement. Everything you need for healthier, a wealthier, and a happier retirement.

Mark Struthers (00:39.534)

Here is your host, Mark Struthers. Hi, welcome to the Healthy and Wealthy Retirement. My name is Mark Struthers. I am your host. Today’s topic is a little unusual. It’s more on the healthy side than the wealthy side. Social media has its flaws, but I ran into an interesting concept. It’s a phrase. It’s something that I’ve heard before, only not in this context. This particular person was talking about choosing keystone activities.

This individual was a 40 something and while not super old, not super young, it was something where a Keystone activity was important for him. And I’ve been a financial advisor long enough and being middle aged myself, I see where Keystone activities are more critical than ever probably.

But especially as we enter into retirement, the new retirement, I don’t like the fancy word paradigm, the new reality of our retirement where we are healthier and we’re living longer. think Keystone and with the social media being what it is, think Keystone activities are probably maybe more critical than ever. A Keystone activity has a significant impact on a broader system or process. It serves as a cornerstone influencing other related behaviors outcome.

So a keystone activity could be like skiing that leads to a whole economic

Mark Struthers (02:14.037)

environment where that all depend on that cornerstone activity, whether it’s a ski lodge, the employees, the employees build, require shops in town and so on and so on.

But what we’re talking about here is more keystone activities for the individual. And I’m thinking more of terms of retirement, but this could apply to actually pretty much any age. And given the society we live in, I even see it being valuable even for teenagers, oddly enough. When we are younger, though, things tend to happen organically. At least they did for Gen Xers. A little iffier now, I think.

But as we get older, we have to be more judicious, more careful with our time. It’s naturally tougher to make friends as we age. know, part of that’s our schedule. Part of it is, you know, we when we’re younger, again, things happen organically. You tend to gravitate naturally without really thinking about it often. You know, sometimes it’s good to be planned. I might have something in common with these folks, but you gravitate towards a group of friends.

You know, and sometimes you change groups, you have multiple groups. But again, it happens effortlessly, more organically. As you get older, it gets tougher, as this 40 something mentioned. And certainly once you get into retirement.

So as I thought about it and I thought about what were some keystone activities, you know, and again, if you think about retirement, especially about even pre-retirement, given you have limited time and maybe limited energy, being more careful about how you spend your time. So some keystone activities that occurred to me were CrossFit, running, martial arts. And the reason being the people in there often have

Mark Struthers (04:09.077)

Other common interest, often working out, nutrition. They might do other classes together. They’re more apt to spend more time at the club. They’re going to care more about, they might do races and running races, triathlons, biking. So, and, and they’re going to be more curious about working out nutrition. If you’re, if you would ask your CrossFit buddy, Hey, why don’t we go to mountain biking? Even if they’ve never been, they might say yes.

Because it’s a natural activity, it fits in well with that personality type.

If I were to ask my golfing buddies, now I gave up golfing once my second child was born, but majority of them I said, hey, let’s go mountain biking. They would probably laugh me off the course. That’s not a good nor bad thing, but that wasn’t, that wasn’t another interest. When I think about golfing, you know, we would have golfing in common, but quite often the other activities was socializing and having a few cocktails and often

We would have lunch or dinner in and around golf. We would meet afterwards for a few drinks and loved it. And then again, there’s nothing wrong with it. But that golfing with friends might’ve been a key, a cornerstone or keystone activity for other things. And the question you have to ask, whether you’re middle-aged or otherwise, are those other things important to you? Does that group kind of fit in with who you are now? You know, cause we certainly change.

We’re different people than we were in high school and in college. And keeping in touch with those old college buddies and having a few, a few pints. Awesome. But quite often you do find as you go back, you know, maybe you don’t have quite as much in common with them as you did back then. It’s nothing wrong with that. Just that we change as we get older. Church. I thought it was a keystone activity. Quite often because you’re going to have same core values.

Mark Struthers (06:11.435)

Now that person might not want to go mountain biking with you, but they might want to do some volunteer work. They might want to work, work a food line, a soup kitchen, something like that. They might want to be involved in prayer groups. So you could think about things that would be an extension of that faith, whatever that faith is. You know, again, that’s where you might say, yep.

That’s a good place to spend my time. Those are my values. could I could see myself connecting with these people beyond this group. In college, I had a dart league and believe it or not, they had them pretty competitive. Well, they were competitive. I still remember the little plastic tips were called to be a’s. We went to a special place to buy them. You know, they didn’t have Amazon back in the 90s. And because you broke so many of them. But darts.

really weren’t the cornerstone activities except for drinking and socializing, which again, if you’re, that’s what you’re looking for. And, you know, also trivia, that was another thing. So those were big things. Had a great time, you know, and who knows, maybe at some point later in life, I might circle back to that. And that might be a a great cornerstone activity. So I think it’s important not to think in terms of good nor bad. Now, as we get older, hopefully,

There are activities that are healthier than simply drinking and socializing. Hopefully there’s some movement like you might have with a pickleball and golf, probably too, unless you’re walking, probably a little more limited. But when I thought about non-cornerstone activities, I thought about pickleball.

Quite often folks who play pickleball aren’t really necessarily, they’re not always as big on nutrition or working out, asking them to go on a bike ride. I’m guessing when fly and you have folks who are 20 playing pickleball and folks that are 80. Now you certainly can easily have the same thing a little bit in CrossFit, usually they again, usually there’s a, there’s more activities you might have in common. thought same thing about racquetball. I used to play racquetball quite a bit.

Mark Struthers (08:24.437)

And again, when I think about asking them about saying, you know, about nutrition, about, about go doing other activities was, it was probably not on the radar screen. Same with hunting. I have clients and family members who are into astronomy and radio. Chances are you might not have anything else in common with them beyond.

And the reason I thought about cornerstone activities is because there’s more and more evidence that a sense of community and social activities are a huge part for a healthy retirement. Honestly, wasn’t horribly long ago that I used to think just hobbies were enough. And I think the old retirement it was when you think in terms of someone retiring between 62 and 67 and that maybe they would spend 10 or 15 years having a hobby might be enough.

But I think in today’s world, especially since we have lost kind of connection with each other, that we are, well, we’re connected, but we’re alone. So we have that social media connection, but we don’t have the deeper connection.

Mark Struthers (09:33.483)

And I think it’s more common that we touch with old friends. I recently started reading Arthur Brooks, Build a Life You Want. It’s about pursuit of happiness. he talks about, he breaks it down to a science and says, yes, the evidence is overwhelming that there are very few people that have deep, deep enough relationships to be fulfilled. That’s why we, we are an unhappy people in many ways.

that and also even though this has well, it a little bit to do with retirement and middle age. But he talks about the introvert and extrovert. And I think about my my sons when when I hear this, often you find introverts don’t have enough friends necessarily. Although they often will have at least one or two close friends, but they don’t they don’t go beyond that. They don’t have enough, maybe super, but super more superficial friends, whereas extroverts often will know lots of people.

and call them friends at least to some level, but they have few deep friends. That’s why I say it’s a separate conversation about introverts and extroverts that all at the conversation. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for this podcast, but it’s it’s something it’s interesting as a father when you think.

Mark Struthers (10:49.033)

As odd as it sounds, this Arthur Brooks book, I think has, it’s had a larger impact on, on, on my ability to be an advisor much more than I, than I thought it would. Because I think as we kind of coach and counsel clients into retirement and addressing more than just the financial, I think understanding where the, I think the vast majority of people are, you know, and some of this stuff is kind of under the surface, you know.

No client is going to tell you that, yep, I haven’t spoken to what I consider close friends in three years. Or I don’t have someone that I can call and share when I’m troubled. Talk about my divorce or whatever the issue is. So I think more and more putting some thought into things like Keystone activities will help you have a healthier, a wealthier, and a happier retirement.

Thanks for joining us again. Don’t forget to hit subscribe below so you can continue to have a healthy and wealthy and happy retirement. Stay well everyone.