Hearing him say that he wanted to leave while he still had the energy to enjoy life and the curiosity to explore different things made me think about how wise he was (finally) being.  I say “finally” because way too often I hear this sentiment – “I’ll retire when the time feels right.”

Google the phrase “when to retire” and you’ll be inundated by articles with titles like “Top 5 Retirement Mistakes Boomers Make”.

Most days I feel like retching when I read headlines like those because the articles focus almost exclusively on the financial aspect of retirement planning and play upon the reader’s fear of running out of money before he dies while completely ignoring the emotional preparation it takes to retire well or, worse yet, the utterly avoidable wreckage that follows when one is forced to retire unexpectedly or dies prematurely without a plan.

Those articles rarely say a lick about the ACTUAL mistakes people regret when focusing solely on the financial aspects of deciding when to retire or the consequences on their families and businesses.

Regrets like these I’ve heard from clients in recent months:

• Retiring feels like “death” to me because I realized too late that I have no life to retire TO.

• When I finally decided it was time to retire, I no longer had the health or emotional stamina to make it through a lengthy sale process and I had mistakenly assumed that when I was “ready” a buyer would magically materialize and cash me out quickly. Boy, was I wrong.

• My health was a wreck and I couldn’t actually do any of the things I had put off forever in the pursuit of my obsession to be financially secure for retirement.

Is Dying at Your Desk Noble or Tragic?

I facilitated a retreat recently for a group of business owners to talk about how to know when it’s time to sell their business and retire.  One of them announced – “Not me, I’m planning to die at my desk.”  Another said he was afraid of running out of money.  A third said that he had heard too many horror stories about company owners who dropped dead right after selling their companies and he had no intention of becoming one of them who died of boredom.

I pushed back a bit on these fellows – what if the reason that an owner died shortly after selling his business wasn’t because he sold too soon but because he sold too late?  Perhaps he waited until his health was failing and “had” to retire.  As for dying of boredom, I asked them to consider the state of their relationships in the context of research that shows loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking or obesity.

Steve Croft shared a brief anecdote that his 60 Minutes colleague Morley Safer had warned him “Don’t stay too long, Steve”.  Morley died of pneumonia at age 84 one week after retiring after 46 years at the show.  Think he might have stayed too long? How is it that you think you’ll “just know” when he didn’t?

At this retreat, the executive who said he was planning to die at his desk said something that made his wife’s face fall in despair when I asked him why he was planning to die at his desk.  “Because it’s the only place I feel truly alive.”  Ouch.

Retirement Feels Like Death to Me

Retirement is 10^th on the list of the top 43 most stressful life events (according to the American Institute of Stress) – 6 points above financial stress – but in the same decile as things like death of a spouse (or a child) and divorce.   It’s actually no surprise that we find retirement, death and divorce in the same stress bucket.  They’re all transitions and, transitions can feel stressful, especially when we don’t talk about and prepare for them.  But, the truth is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

More than sixty percent of business owners think they will “know” when it’s time to retire and will be able to plan for a sale when that time comes.  As a consequence, fewer than thirty percent of business owners have an exit strategy or succession plan in the event of their unexpected departure or death.  Many of them play the “One More Year” game, assuming that time is on their side assuming they can safely continue to delay the inevitable.

The problem is that there is a significant disconnect between when people THINK they’ll retire and when they ACTUALLY retire. Almost half of the population (48%) incurs an unplanned retirement event – often to cope with a health problem or disability of their own or to care for a spouse or other family member.   That’s a huge problem.

The reality is that every owner will leave his business, with or without a plan.

The result is that in an effort to maximize economic security by focusing our attention on “getting just a bit more” we perpetuate the twin myths of “Time is Money” and “I’ll Know When It’s Time” ignoring a huge risk.  Then, when an unexpected departure happens, the capacity and stamina of those who need it most to get through a transition is significantly diminished.  The result is that the failure to plan for an inevitable transition ends up leaving everyone affected traumatized and with an even greater loss of security and confidence in the world around them.

Take the case of Barbara, Brian’s wife, who told me “My husband thought it was a joke to say he’d ‘die at his desk and leave me wealthy and in charge of the business.’  It was no joke when my ability to grieve his unexpected death was sidelined by all the clients, staff and vendors who needed my attention.  The reality was that the estate received only a fraction of the business’ worth and, if he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for leaving me in this mess.”  The sad news is that this was avoidable.

Does continuing to own your business really keep ill health, death and boredom at bay?

Ironically, perhaps the best time to sell your business is when you don’t have to!  You cannot expect a good deal when your back is against the wall.  Most business owners hesitate to sell when the times are good or to even contemplate their exit.  Selling when there is no other option understandably gets you a less-than-enviable deal.  Any issue such as the business owner getting burnt out, the owner having health issues and/or the business losing a key customer can make a business virtually unsellable, or sellable at a much reduced value.

A burnt out or unhealthy owner does not have the energy and will necessary to keep the business growing and expanding.  Little effort is put in to seek new markets and tap into new customer bases.  The staff may become uninspired, the key customers may head elsewhere and the business may lose its wings.  Buyers aren’t interested in buying businesses on a downward curve.  Many business owners find themselves in similar situations and are forced to sell from a place of weakness, all because they thought they’d know when.

Your retirement plan may completely depend on a successful sale of your business.  If so, you cannot let your declining energies bring down the value of your business.  It is important that you recognize the right time to sell your business and put it up for sale when it is still going strong and you still have stamina.  Buyers are not only interested in stability; they are looking to buy businesses that are likely to grow in the future.  Think you’ll “know” when it’s time?

Don’t Let your Business Die with You 

Does that sound dramatic? Companies where the founding CEO dies are statistically more likely to go out of business.  They rarely survive and the family is typically forced to sell the business way below the market value compared to what the business was worth if the business owner was still there.  Even for those few companies that do survive, the ripples from sharp sales drops and instability continue or even intensify for 5 or more years after the founder’s death.

Think it can’t happen to you?  Stanford GSB did an impressive study that showed, on average, 7 CEO’s of publicly traded companies die each year (most commonly from cancer, heart attack, stroke or airplane, auto or other accidents)  The typical financial hit each company sustained was substantial, especially in the absence of a plan.  And, these were public companies with strong leadership teams in place to backstop the sudden loss of a CEO.

Paradoxically, Talking about Death, Retirement and Having an Exit pPlan Creates Resilience and a Sense of True Security

Talking about death and money have long been cultural taboos.  Interestingly, we’ve come much further along in our willingness to talk about money than we have in talking about death.  We live in a death-phobic society and look at death as something separate from our lives that we want to keep at bay, as far away from us as possible.  We avoid talking about it at all costs.  And the misperception is that if we avoid the subject we can avert the experience and avoid the fear.  Worse yet, we have conflated thinking about retirement as thinking about death, by focusing so heavily on the fear of economic loss.

We all know it’s crazy, but there is a reason why we look away from the topics of death (and now retirement.)  Psychology sheds light on it through the terror-management theory.  In a nutshell, it means that when we’re faced with the idea of death (and the loss of things we have conflated with death such as money or connection), we defensively turn to things we believe will shield us from death, literal or otherwise.  Currently, that thing society is using to focus our defenses on is the illusion of financial security as a way to shield ourselves from death (and financial loss to which the fear has similarly become attached).  The problem is that Time is NOT Money, Money cannot buy more Time.  The thing we are innately aware we will run out of is time.  We have moved our existential fear of running out of time onto a defense that falsely assumes that if we focus on running out of money, we can forestall running out of time.

The problem is that shifting our focus to money doesn’t work.  In fact, it simply makes us more afraid of the impending loss of time.  Think about that the next time you’re tempted to click on the stock ticker or an article that purports to tell you how to avoid the pitfalls of retirement, as a way to calm yourself.  The actual way to feel secure in retirement is to focus on your mortality and double down on your connections with people important to you.

An interesting study found that people who were naturally more mindful of the reality of their mortality had less fear and anxiety – both about death AND money – and were able to take in a greater sense of safety from being in connected relationships, purposeful community engagement in causes that they care about.  Even better, they experienced significantly less stress following illness, the death of loved ones, retirement and financial setbacks.

Death Doesn’t Send a Calendar Invitation – The average life expectancy in the US is 78.69 years. What does that mean for your mortality reality check? Most of us subconsciously believe we will live for a long time – no matter our current age or health, even though we all know someone who died before that statistical “average” number.  Thinking about and discussing our mortality forces a self-evaluation process and life review that is unnerving for many of us.

But talking about death is important, because it means we’re talking about life.

I’m lucky enough to have this conversation with clients – a lot – mostly because I prompt it, no matter the transition I’m working with them on – changing careers or selling their business.  I’m currently working with two clients who are actively facing terminal illness and one other who luckily only had a scare last year.  Each of them has told me that, when faced with his mortality, ‘You see life as you should see it.”  One told me, ‘It completely put my ambition and what matters in their rightful perspectives.’

Will you know when it’s time and what to do then? Don’t wait.  There’s a reason I named my company Chase What Matters.

The post Will You Know When It’s Time? appeared first on Denise Logan.

Several times a week I hear a client say some variation of this:

For me, money represents security.  Having money means being secure; not having money means that at any given moment my whole life could come crashing down.

I talk clients off the ledge weekly about their (typically unfounded) fear of impending financial ruin, no matter whether the amount in their bank account is in the hundreds, thousands or millions of dollars.

A small child tucked in their bed at night doesn’t feel safe if they believe there is a monster hiding in the closet.  But, the consistent, reliable, warm embrace of a mother’s hug may make a child feel safe.  We all know that a mother’s (and father’s) love alone is not enough to protect her child from the world which surrounds them, but it does go a long way toward creating that sense of safety that they will carry into the world with them.

Only when we are certain of our emotional and physical protection are we – in effect – SAFE.  So where does security come into play?

Think of SECURITY as if it were the overarching umbrella protecting our SAFETY.

Let’s take a look at how money and security became tied together in one of my client’s brains and see if it mirrors how you feel.

**

Like many people who begin to equate money with security, Mark formed an association between security and money early in life.

When Mark was a child, his father was consumed by financial worries.  His father put in long hours, often traveling for his work.  When he wasn’t working, Mark’s father was depressed and irritable, worrying about not having enough money.

When his father was earning what he thought was “enough” money, there was a sharp reduction in tension and the subtle but palpable sense of impending doom that permeated family life.  Not only were there new toys, but sometimes Mark’s father would actually relax, smiling and laughing with the children, take them to a movie or tell them stories.  That’s when Mark felt most secure.

Over a period of years, Mark absorbed the fearful energy that emanated from his father about never having enough money.  It had undermined his sense of security and evolved into his own dream of someday having a lot of money.

Mark tells me that when he has enough money he won’t have to worry any more.  He thinks then he will be free of this insecurity and fear that plagues him.

In attempting to cope with the anxieties of life and never having developed the solid sense of inner security that comes from feelings of trust and dependency gratification from people, Mark narrowed his view of the world.  He has focused his entire attention and energy on one aspect of it – money.  Like Linus’ security blanked, Mark retreats from the anticipation of impending disaster (real or imagined) and relies upon the illusory protective power of more money to make himself feel safe.

**

The sad reality for Mark, and other “security collectors”, is that once money becomes the perceived source of your security, no amount of money is sufficient to allay the fears and provide enough security to stop pursuing the money.  It matters little if the numbers are in the hundreds, thousands or millions.  There is always the recurrent fear that tragedy could come along and wipe it all away which only adds to the person’s anxiety and distrust.

Not only does the money NOT reduce the feelings of emotional insecurity, but my clients like Mark admit that knowing others look up to them, providing them with respect and admiration, makes them LESS willing to allow themselves to seek avenues to satisfy their needs for emotional security.  Instead, they discover that using money as the measure of security fuels their fear and suspicion of others.  The more money they acquire, the more they worry about losing it.  And the fear of losing it makes them even less able to enjoy it, setting up a cycle of becoming ever more defensive rather than relaxed, thinking that when they have “enough” THEN they will relax.

Instead, they become further deprived of social pleasure and connection, ignore their physical symptoms, often sacrificing their physical needs to their financial compulsion.  The preoccupation with money leads them to work longer hours, even when it means enduring intense fatigue.  Happiness, relationships and health all suffer as they become secondary to the illusory security of money which they continue to pursue.

Many of these talented, well-resourced professionals suffer from a persistent poverty complex – I consistently hear a panicky distorted fear that they will end up eating cat food while living in a van down by the river.

Where Does This Fear Come From? 

If the dependency upon parents or others in authority does not provide a feeling of protection and safety, the child learns to distrust people and seeks something else to rely upon.  While Linus turned to his blanket, frequently, that something else is money.  If having money reduces anxiety by making the person feel less dependent upon others, money may replace people as the preferred source of security.

Without basic trust, safety and security is impossible and responsible adulthood is impossible.  Children who grow up with inadequate emotional and relational security become anxious and insecure and feel incapable of dealing with a world that feels overwhelming, overpowering and threatening.  Which leads them to seek an alternate form of security; like Linus’ blanket, money becomes the thing they use to soothe themselves.

People who develop a sense of distrust are constantly on guard to protect themselves from getting hurt – physically, psychologically, or financially.  Originally the fear is most likely physical – the fear of physical pain and suffering, possibly even the fear of death.  Very real for a child who is dependent upon adults.  Next the fear my be psychological – the fear of rejection, loss of love, humiliation and the like.  Eventually, however, as the person depends more and more on money for ego satisfaction and security, the fear of FINANCIAL loss becomes paramount and mimics those same physical symptoms of fear.  Preoccupation with the threat of losing one’s means of security does not create an environment conducive to pleasure, instead they end up substituting a psychological payoff to ease the anxiety and end up creating a cost to the self in unhappiness and emotional damage.

In one series of strips, Lucy uses Linus and his blanket as a science fair project.  She shows how Linus gets dizzy, nauseous, and eventually passes out when he is deprived of his blanket.  Have you ever felt like that when you got anxious about money?

People like Mark who are security obsessed are consistently turning a distrust of people into the trust of money and trying to find a feeling of safety in money to offset a feeling of emotional insecurity.

The most sinister aspect of using money as your source of security is what you’re unwittingly doing to your kids.  When you convince yourself that there’s no harm in allowing money as your substitute for emotional security/relational connection, never forget that they are watching and learning about the world from you.

What parent hasn’t responded to a child’s complaint about how much the parent is working … “Yeah, well where do you think the money comes from for this roof over your head, the food in your belly (or fill in the blank)?”

The message your child receives as they watch you is “If I didn’t have to provide for you/your future, I wouldn’t have to work so hard.”  It is unintentionally shaming and leaves their plea for connection with you unmet, showing them that the true source of security they can rely upon is what you provide through money and things, not affection, time, attachment.  Even when you think you are indulging them, they receive the underlying message that money is what matters and on what they can depend most.  Your children learn to deny themselves the security of connection in favor of money as their substitute sense of security.

When the amount of affection is in short supply because of time, family conflict or detachment, kids turn away from people as the source of affection and security, and seek gratification in the collecting of things/money.  They learn early on that they cannot depend upon their parents for consistent, reliable relational security as they are given things instead of love/time and so their sense of identity begins to come from attachment to possessions.  Dozens and dozens of my clients admit to attaining their sense of purpose and warding off the feelings of isolation and loneliness by pursuing money.  Money has become safer than people because it can’t abandon you, make you angry or make demands upon you.

They admit that their primary goal is not to become happy or successful (although that’s what they tell the world) – it’s to be safe.  The answer to all their problems is to get more money which will make them impervious to any potential catastrophe.  When they feel anxious or threatened in any area, they seek security by increasing their money supply.

The problem can’t be solved with money, it’s about trust.  And it’s not about trusting someone with their money, it’s about trusting someone with their emotional safety.  But, repeatedly they withdraw from people, putting their trust in money.  They resist becoming dependent upon people, hiding their craving for dependency and connection.  They view people as being unreliable and undependable, insisting instead that money can always be relied upon.  People can reject or abandon, but they can hang onto money.

These same brilliant professionals tend to continue to lodge themselves in the trap, so it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of it.  Despite any pretense to the contrary, money is more important to the security collector than people.  Money becomes an aspect of almost every decision they make.  Not only is it a consideration, it becomes the primary   consideration.

How to Find Real and Lasting Security

It’s not hopeless, but to be certain it is difficult to break out of this trap because it’s long rooted and socially sanctioned.  Having learned to reduce anxiety and vulnerability by relying on money, not people, means shifting the dynamic around trust – and choosing trustworthy people who value relational and emotional connection and safety.

Since relying on money seems to work, and is in its way reassuring, it becomes self-reinforcing – although it is an illusion.  Having learned how to relate to people in ways that ensure they will appear as untrustworthy as you believe them to be, you must watch for the unconscious motive to justify and perpetuate the distrust.

My client, Richard, is a prime example.  After 40 years of instilling in his children the idea that money is the only thing in the world that can be trusted, and therefore should be accumulated at all costs, Richard learned that he was dying.  He bitterly bemoaned the fact that his children’s only interest in him seemed to be related to their inheritance.  He took no pride in the fact that they had learned so well the lesson he sought to teach them.

It takes time to learn to trust others, to return the focus on relational safety.  Trusting, becoming involved, loving, being dependent, needing – these all involve risk.  The person who devotes every waking moment to being safe essentially avoids living.  One of the unexpected benefits of developing trust in others is an increased trust in yourself and your abilities to cope effectively with the problems of everyday living.

Reclaiming intimacy with others after one has been hiding behind the illusory security fortress of money is not simple or comfortable.  The alternative, however, is the annihilation of one’s humanness and its replacement with the empty, dehumanized despair that comes from trying to find emotional nourishment and satisfaction in things.

Of course, you could always just buy a nicer blanket.

The post Is Money Your Security Blanket? appeared first on Denise Logan.