Nov 24, 2020
The resilient second-halfer through wisdom and personal stories is prepared and empowered for the second half of life. Tom Rasmussen, Income Protection Specialist with Clear Solutions, shares his proven insights about how to thrive through life happenings. This two part podcast explores first what makes a good life and second how to financially build resiliency.
Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer. Learn more at Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging.
Transcript:
You're listening to Studio 809. This is what community sounds like.
Cynthia Margiotta:
This is Aging with Altitude, welcome to all! Brought to you by the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging. We strive to provide answers, assistance, and advocacy to our elders. Thank you for joining us today. Our topic today is Life Happens. What is your plan? I'm your host, Cynthia Margiotta, a geriatric social worker and volunteer with Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging. With me today is Tom Rasmussen, Rasmussen, Rasmussen, I will never get your name right. He is an income protection specialist with Clear Solutions Insurance Services. Tom is an income protection and longevity health planning specialist advising on life, disability, extended care, and health care planning. Tom has helped thousands of people with income protection planning across the country. He was a national broker to hundreds of agents across the country, and as a received top awards for management and production. He's published articles for industry magazines and local papers as well been interviewed on radio several times now a podcast regarding senior issues and the importance of planning. He's a member of the nonprofit Long Term Care Forum Panel of Colorado, advising state legislators and industry experts on long term care planning issues in the state of Colorado. He holds the designation of CLTC, which classifies him as a certified long term care specialist. Tom is currently doing educational workshops and seminars on income protection throughout Colorado. He's the co-host of the streaming TV show New Horizons, Living Life to the Fullest, which illustrates how resilient and empowering the second half of life can be. Tom contributed to Kevin Gussman's Amazon bestseller Retire with Freedom and Confidence, and released his own book called Are you Protecting your Greatest Asset in December of 2018? You've done a lot, haven't you?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, I like to keep busy.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Yes!
Tom Rasmussen:
Don't we all?
Cynthia Margiotta:
Don't we all? Yes. So let's get started with some of our questions. First off, what is meant by "second halfers"?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, that's a great question, and appreciate you allow me to be on the show here. So, "second halfers"...you know, there's a term that has been used for a number of years called seniors. And I've never liked that labeling, because it identifies that certain segment of society as being maybe has no value. I mean, that, you know, we're in a society that let's face it, our particular culture doesn't really cherish seniors. And I decided to coin a new phrase of " second halfers", because it doesn't identify somebody by what you would consider their age. And so, if I said senior to somebody, what age do you define that by? Sixty-five or older would generally be the response? If I say "second halfer"? You mean 45, 48? Sure, why not? It just it's a way to break down this the perceptions of society that you know, seniors are not ready to put out to pasture.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Alright, I like your term, by the way, I think it's a really useful thing. I think we should switch it up a little, huh? You did something like that. So what is resiliency?
Tom Rasmussen:
Resiliency is an interesting word because when I do workshops, I always ask the audience, are they resilient? And it's interesting, the puzzled look you get from people. And so I have to go a little bit further and I ask, have you ever made it through a challenge, whatever that challenge may be? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure I have. Well, the dictionary defines resiliency as recovering strength and I always have to point out that resiliency is achieved by pushing through a challenging situation. So, resiliency is something that we probably have all experienced in our lives. But I don't know if we have identify it as such, when we actually achieve it.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Yeah, well, it's hard to be resilient. I think that that's a good term to use. I don't think that's used very often in our society.
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, for resiliency was easy than everybody be doing it.
Cynthia Margiotta:
I mean, it's not used that word, you know, either you did it or you didn't do it. Not that you became more resilient in and learned from it.
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, it's words are powerful. And I tried to take a very strong look at the words I use to identify either meanings beyond what people perceive certain things to be, or change the perception of what people think, like seniors to "second halfers".
Cynthia Margiotta:
So, what is empowerment?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, I use those two words together, because sometimes people identify them as being the same thing. And they're really not, you know, where I stated the dictionary basically defines resiliency as recovering strength. Empowerment is defined as to give power to. So even though they're not the same thing, they're very much connected. Because when somebody pushes through a challenging situation, and is resilient, by doing so they empower themselves. And so that's where the connection comes from. And so that's why I like to use those two words. Because it really came about when I was writing my book, it dawned on me after I was about three quarters away of writing it that after thirty some odd years of doing what I do, nobody actually looked at putting a planning strategy together as empowerment. And I had to ask myself, and other people as well, why do we not think of that as empowerment? And so we had to define what was empowerment? Well, empowerment is anything that gives you the ability to be resilient. And so empowerment, on one hand, can come from resiliency or you can empower yourself to provide you more resiliency.
Cynthia Margiotta:
So they are wrapped up in each other very strongly. And they, like a circle, they come and they go. The circle can go clockwise, as well as counterclockwise.
Tom Rasmussen:
I mean, from the standpoint of putting together strategies that help what I call "life happens events", what's more empowering, to have a funding plan in place to help you push through those "life happens events", like a disability, an extended care situation, and unexpected death. You know, that should be a more prideful ability to say, look what I did, then to push it away, don't talk about it, and then not have it at all, and then have those things come into your life. And then is that the thing that could have created the resiliency to get through that? And because of that you didn't you achieve resiliency?
Cynthia Margiotta:
Hey, smart to be prepared?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, we'd like to think so. Yeah, I wish everybody would take that a little more seriously.
Cynthia Margiotta:
So they definitely relate to each other. Absolutely. Yes. So what does this have to do with the second half of life then?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, with having thirty-plus years, working with, you know, the "second halfers" that I have, there's things that we have to understand that as we go through our seasoned years, so to speak. Then, can we better position ourselves back to the preparedness and planning to be able to be more empowered to get every moment to its fullest capacity? You know, that's that's how it relates. I mean, there's several different things that I always attribute to when I give workshops and seminars and regards to how do you achieve empowerment and resiliency. And there's four things that I always talk about. So it's decluttering, telling your story, doing the paperwork, and have a funding plan.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Is that are part two? Is that the question for our part two? I don't want to ask that yet. So don't let don't get there yet. Oh, good. What are some of the things one can do to bring about resiliency, and empowerment to the second half of their lives?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, like I mentioned decluttering, let's talk about that. So decluttering is a very interesting thing because who we as maybe a human nature, we like to keep things, collect things, gather things, for whatever reason. And I don't know about you, but through my life when I've had either four situations or by design, or I decluttered my life, it was very freeing. I use an expression many times that, do we own things or do things own us, you know, the more things we have, it takes a lot more of our time to maintain those things, whether it's time or financially contributed to the maintaining those things. So decluttering is one of those things that as we go into our second half of life, the more we declutter, it's two things, it's less for us to worry about as we get closer to our end result, which let's face it, we're all gonna pass away someday. And it doesn't leave that burden to our loved ones, to figure out what the heck they do with all your stuff. And a lot of times, we have this assumption that they want our stuff. And if we don't have that dialogue, we don't know if they want it or not. And so I've always said this, the decluttering can take away from the experience of embracing the whole passing of a loved one, because they can't fully be in that embracing of that passing and that cycle of life because they're stressed out about what to do with the stuff.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Stuff is a pain in the back!
Tom Rasmussen:
And declutter, it's part physical, material. But it's also emotional.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Okay. Okay.
Tom Rasmussen:
Have we decluttered the emotional regrets that we might have, because of relationships because of things that were said one way or the other? You know, that's part of decluttering, too.
Cynthia Margiotta:
It's important to do that maybe, for our mental health. You make me think, Tom,
Tom Rasmussen:
I've always said that. If we know, the two certainties in life, that we're going to age and we're going to pass away someday. Then, if we can, as mentally as we can think through this, especially as we come being in our second half of life, as opposed to doing how do we define a good life lived? Is that how much stuff we have? Or how many moments and impactful events that we had with other people as well as to ourselves?
Cynthia Margiotta:
For me, I'd say it'd be the people. Think of how many people have been positively affected by my life?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, if we don't actually ask that question of ourselves, how do we ever know what that means to us personally, before we can go forward, and have that good life left.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Right. Good questions. You're throwing questions back at me, Tom. I'm supposed to be interviewing you!
Tom Rasmussen:
Yeah. Okay.
Cynthia Margiotta:
So how does telling your story bring about empowerment?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, I've found that we're not capturing our life stories, as much as we probably should. And I'll give them my own personal story with that. My mother did a lot of genealogy had many different records, and she had boxes and boxes of photographs when she passed. Well, I inherited those. But what I didn't realize is none of those photographs had any information on them. So I had no idea who these people were. And so it got me to think that if we're able to pass on the wisdom that we have learned in our second half a life, how can we pass that on, if we don't record it in some nature, whether it's written, whether it's video, whether it's just, you know, audio? If we don't tell our story, it's lost when we're gone. And even to our own children, because our own children only know us from the time that birth was given to them going forward. They've really don't know who we were prior to that unless we had those conversations. If they don't know it, how can they pass it on to our grandkids and great grandkids?
Cynthia Margiotta:
Right. Information is important to share within families. Yeah, my mother had, I ended up with all her photos, and everything had initials, which is better than you got, I will say. But, you know, one of those many pictures was marked CJ. And it was lots of pictures of CJ. Who's CJ? Well, CJ was my mother, Claudia Jones.
Tom Rasmussen:
Oh!
Cynthia Margiotta:
When she married my father, she became Claudia Cleaver. So who was CJ? So those pictures, you know? It took a little, I guess, hard guesswork to figure out that those younger pictures have that 10-to 15-year-old were actually my mom.
Tom Rasmussen:
You know, it's not only telling our story so we don't lose ourselves once we're gone, and that can be passed on to generations and generations. But there's a real important thing that has to be, I'd say it has to be earned. I don't know if everybody agrees with that. It's called wisdom. Are we passing wisdom on to our generations that will precede us? Because if we can help them understand, as they get to a point where they can learn, maybe they don't have to go through those failures and mistakes to learn that wisdom. If we can pass it on, prior to them having to learn that on their own.
Cynthia Margiotta:
But, the young people don't want to hear mom and dad's wisdoms.
Tom Rasmussen:
You know, it's funny. Maybe you had the same scenario that I did. But I've heard this from people and I and I have actually experienced this. It's amazing how smart my parents became the older that I got.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Right? Yeah, my mom suddenly got a brain. And I was like, wow, who knew?
Tom Rasmussen:
You know, they couldn't turn on the TV but boy, we can't mistake wisdom for, I guess, intellect. You know, there's a lot of smart people that I've met through my life, but I wouldn't say that we're really wise. So there's a difference between intellect and wisdom, wisdom is learned. And life will continue to give us these lessons to learn the you know, and if we don't, we'll repeat them. But the only way that we gain wisdom is acknowledging how we get past that lesson, resiliency. Empowerment comes from the knowledge of understanding of I shouldn't do that again.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Learn from my past mistakes. What is that saying? You know, something about doing it over and over again?
Tom Rasmussen:
Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
Cynthia Margiotta:
There you go. That's the exact saying! It was Einstein, huh? Yeah, he should be my hero. So how does doing the paperwork bring about empowerment?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, that kind of goes back to the decluttering. If we've decluttered the things in our lives and we've told our story, then we have the documents in place to help our loved ones know what to do with our passing. Or, if we just become incapacitated or incompetent. You know, they have to step in and take over our lives. How do they know what to do? Do they know who to contact, you know, so advanced directives, a will, or a trust, who is my insurance agent, my banker, my attorney? If we don't put this in some form of writing, whoever is supposed to fill in for us can go to and have those contacts, as well as have the authorization through, you know, the proper forms, to be able to make those decisions like the power of attorneys and, and those kinds of things. Then again, we're putting that burden and that stress on our loved ones when it wasn't necessary because we didn't want to get around to that.
Cynthia Margiotta:
I think it's so important to do that. Get those papers in order, have them all, you know, somewhere. Tell the people that are involved in those papers where they are and how to get to them. You want your power of attorney to know what's going on, what your expectations are, what your needs are, what your wishes are. And if you don't do that, they're lost.
Tom Rasmussen:
Even getting down to the details of who you want to step in for your financial matters, that might not be the same person you want to step in for your health issues. You might want to separate those two.
Cynthia Margiotta:
I think that's brilliant, separate them. In most cases, it's very important. When I became my mother's medical power of attorney was very good. I did not want her financial powers of attorney. And so my sister kept those and she was in charge of the money. And I was in charge or, no offense, but in charge of the body. And I think it worked out well for us in our family. But what if you only have one kid, you know?
Tom Rasmussen:
There are other ways to have, you know, people that can fill in those roles, like fiduciaries. You know, there's there's different ways that you can have people fulfill those roles. I hate to say it, but I've seen situations where the individual who had the purse strings was also making the medical recommendations. And because they knew if they spent money on the medical, that they would reduce their inheritance. So that played a role in their decision making.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Right? And that's where some of the problems start, right? You know, between the two people. Then when you're only at one, okay, so you have you just shared the one if one person's in charge of both. If you have two people, you can sometimes have the problem. It's sort of the opposite where the medical wants to do one thing like, oh, let's say mom needs a new hip, we got to get her a new hip, we've got to pay for that. Let's do that. And then the financial power of attorney says, "no, I don't want to spend that money".
Tom Rasmussen:
That's not what that's about. It's putting the proper paperwork in place so you're the one that dictates who has that power. Because if it's health related, and it's established properly within the documents, that says, "all my assets are to be used for my health and welfare until such than the financial person has to follow through with that". But it's based on the legal aspects of how that's written and put into place.
Cynthia Margiotta:
And that's why you need paperwork.
Tom Rasmussen:
So ultimately, we have the power to define how we want that to work. So maybe we don't want to have these last miracle efforts. And just you know, and that goes back to the advanced directive, right? You want to know what it ultimately comes back to? Is having what I call the kitchen table chat, the conversation. And that's where all of this is lost. Because I talked about the two certainties of life earlier, when we talked about, well, let me just throw out there. When I do workshops, I ask what are the two certainties of life?
Cynthia Margiotta:
Birth and death?
Tom Rasmussen:
That's not what people answer. They answer death and taxes. And so you're absolutely right. But I knew you knew that. But I always go, "no, you're only half right". Taxes were not always a certainty of life. It's become that. But aging and death are certainties of life. And so then to follow up with that, when do we start aging? At birth? And so could you honestly say, when do we start dying? At birth? They're tied together. So these are two certainties in life that we can't dispute. Then, how come we can't talk about these issues? How come we don't have conversations with our loved ones, and talk about the cycle of life? So we can honestly address these issues, because we want to bury our head in the sand and pretend that we're never going to age, and we're probably never going to die. Until we do.
Cynthia Margiotta:
In our household, my poor kids grew up talking about death, dying, hospice, more than we talked about them ever getting married, which probably shouldn't have been that way. But...
Tom Rasmussen:
But they are prepared for it, arent they?
Cynthia Margiotta:
I think they are more so than people their age as a general rule, I don't know.
Tom Rasmussen:
As prepared for it as anyone can be. You know, we always think, oh, I'm ready. And you know, the emotional aspect can never be realized until we're in that that space. But we still have to have the conversation.
Cynthia Margiotta:
I'm sixty-three years old, and I'm starting to see more and more of the people, because I work in the aging industry, like yourself, more and more people that are my age, that do work in this industry, coming to see that it's almost aging is coming home. And they're starting to see it in themselves. And I don't wish them ill, don't get me wrong. But I like being able to see that they're identifying more with the older people that they are working with. They are feeling those pains too.
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, it's an interesting situation, because there's been a few books written on the progression of life. And I talked about second halfers, the first phase of life is is kind of been presented as the doing. It's when we get our careers, it's when we get married, we have kids. So when people say to you tell me about yourself, "well, I'm a father, I'm this, I'm that". Well, that's not who you are, that's what you do. But somewhere along the line, most of us, not everyone, transitions into the being. We no longer are the doing, we start getting closer to our inner being. And that's I think, what's we're talking about, the acceptance of life.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Who am I?
Tom Rasmussen:
Who am I? And what do I want. And that's I think that's all part of the wisdom aspect too.
Cynthia Margiotta:
But do some people think that when they talk about themselves in that way or think of themselves that way? Do they think that they're being selfish?
Tom Rasmussen:
I don't think so.
Cynthia Margiotta:
Okay. It was a question.
Tom Rasmussen:
I think it's a revelation. You know, if we don't know ourselves, then how can we know anything else? I mean, that's a whole different subject. And maybe we can do another time on that. But that's the being. That's when you get down to the nitty gritty of who am I really?
Cynthia Margiotta:
Yeah, I've volunteered at several different places, as you know. And I could probably walk through those places and tell you the people who are in that stage.
Tom Rasmussen:
But I said, not everybody gets there.
Cynthia Margiotta:
And not everybody gets there. And I think, being aware of themselves so intimately. Is that a good way, being aware of who they are as themselves, as opposed to what they do? I think really changes how they project themselves. And it's quite beautiful, actually.
Tom Rasmussen:
It is.
Cynthia Margiotta:
I like that.
Tom Rasmussen:
It's almost a rebirth.
Cynthia Margiotta:
So our last question, before we break. Then we'll do our second half another day. So what does a funding plan bring to resiliency?
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, that's a great question. And I've been told on a few occasions that this is where I bring in the buzzkill of any kind of great emotional interconnected discussion that's going on. Because when I call it "the buzzkill" I always bring in the reality of the financial, that touches everything in life. And so I kind of touched on a little earlier, all these things we're talking about. aging, passing away, maybe we have health health issues, maybe we don't maybe we need caregiving, what have you. There is a financial side to that. And too many times, because we don't address our funding plans of when those might happen, we can't be resilient. And we basically turn a medical crisis into a financial crisis. So that's the last thing that I like to emphasize, when we're talking about empowerment. It goes back to again, when I was writing my book is what strategies have we put in place to empower our loved ones and ourselves with funding plans to help us through these "life happens events".
Cynthia Margiotta:
We need to make plans and be prepared as much as we can.
Tom Rasmussen:
Well, you know, in my book, I wrote about the three approaches that I've seen through my thirty some odd years of doing business. And those three approaches, what I find. people's biggest decisions in life are either they tell an elaborate story about how it's all gonna play, or they make an excuse, or they actually have a plan. And I will tell you of all the years I've been doing this, not one time have I not seen a plan be a story and excuse every single time. But we still want to tell the stories. And we still want to make excuses.
Cynthia Margiotta:
My friend's husband, no names, but his plan is to die in bed. And he wants his wife to leave him there. That's his plan.
Tom Rasmussen:
No, that's his story.
Cynthia Margiotta:
That's his story!
Tom Rasmussen:
That's not a plan, thats a story.
Cynthia Margiotta:
That's his story. And it's like, don't worry, you don't have to do that. You know, so I get that. So, we're gonna break here, and we're gonna have a second half. And that second half of our podcast, really the main question will be, so don't answer this, what are the four options for Life Happens Events? So we'll come back and do that, I guess in about two weeks. With that we're gonna close. That's our show. And thank you to all of you for being with us today. And until next time, take good care of yourself. Tom, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Tom Rasmussen:
Thank you so much.