#3 – Unbelievably Unretired with Richard Eisenberg

Ryan Doolittle [00:04:40]:

Yeah, we always talk about it in terms of the money, sort of. You got to get that taken care of so that you can focus on the more important things. So you mentioned you do some work for People magazine. I was wondering if that means you help decide who gets sexiest man alive and if I’m in the running.

Richard Eisenberg [00:04:59]:

Well, I don’t, but my wife did. Actually. My wife is a journalist and for many years she worked at People, and one of her jobs was to choose the sexiest man. And I’m sorry to say neither of us made it. But I was disallowed because family connections, I can’t explain why you’re not right, but there’s still time.

Ryan Doolittle [00:05:18]:

I must have been in the running. I’m sure I was. Top five. Okay, so let’s talk about you’re, the author of Two Boggs. It seems like you wrote them pretty early in your career, or at least the first one, or maybe both. How did you just come out of the gate writing those? You wrote one, how to Avoid a Midlife Financial Crisis, which is a great title. And the Money book of personal finance. So I’m wondering how you just did that. And then now that you’re having more time, are you thinking about writing another book?

Richard Eisenberg [00:05:50]:

So the first book came out of an article that I wrote for Money magazine. I wrote it when the baby boomers were first starting to turn 40, and what I found at that time was a lot of them were not in great shape financially and were getting nervous about their financial futures. And a publisher saw the article and then said to me, would you like to turn that into a book? And I thought that sounded interesting. So I spent a while doing that and turned it into a book. And then that became a paperback version and all that. The other book, the Money book of personal finance came because I was working in Money magazine. I was there for about 19 years doing all kinds of things, starting as a fact checker and leaving as the executive editor. And while I was there, the editor and publisher said, it’d be great if there wes a Money book across the finance from the people at Money magazine. So they asked me if I would be the editor and writer of that. A lot of that book I wrote, some that were written by other people at Money, and I would edit them and then we turn that into a comprehensive.

Ryan Doolittle [00:06:53]:

Okay. Okay. Switching gears to family. Your wife Liz, right? You live together in New Jersey. You have two sons. I don’t know if these ages are still accurate. Are they in their 30s?

Richard Eisenberg [00:07:07]:

They are.

Ryan Doolittle [00:07:08]:

Okay. Will and Aaron, they’re very successful screenwriters. One’s an actor, one’s maybe a comedian.

Richard Eisenberg [00:07:18]:

Yeah. So they are mostly screenwriting partners. They’ve worked together in Los Angeles writing for TV and movies and for Audible. But also my older son Aaron is an actor. He studied theater at Northwestern. And my younger son Will is a director. He studied film at USC. And so when they can, they’re acting and directing also. But it’s hard to get those jobs. And they had more success and found it a little bit easier to come up with ideas of things they want to write and get people to produce them, and then occasionally they will direct and act in them. But mostly they write them well.

Ryan Doolittle [00:07:54]:

It seems like they I don’t know if they’re still on staff, but they were working with Guillermo del Toro’s company, right. I think 30 or something.

Richard Eisenberg [00:08:03]:

Yeah. They worked in a writer’s room for an animated series called Troll Hunters that he created, and they were there for one year and really enjoyed doing that. And now they’re doing some other things. They had a movie that was on Comedy Central a few months back called Cursed Friends. They’ve got a few other things that they’re working on right now. They’ve got an Audible series that’s going to be coming out in September. So they’re busy, but with the writer strike. They’re not as busy as they’d like to be.

Ryan Doolittle [00:08:29]:

Yeah, for sure. That’s a whole discussion. I hope they’re doing okay and wearing sunscreen as they’re out there picketing. So spending time with children is a big part of what we think brings happiness for retired people. I’ve heard you talk about how for some people it makes sense to move to be closer. For some people it doesn’t. I don’t know how often you get to see each other. Have you been able to see them more being across the country than you did when you were working full time?

Richard Eisenberg [00:09:00]:

A little bit more. The biggest difference is, because my wife and I are both unretired, what we’ve done is for the past two Februaries, we spent the month of February in Los Angeles. We lived in Airbnb both times. I would do my work. Whatever work I was going to do, I did it from there. And then when our sons and their wives had time to see us, we would see them, and when they didn’t, we would find ways to stay busy ourselves. Beyond that, I would say we see our sons about as often as we did before. Every now and then they’ll come east. Every now and then it will come west. But my younger son’s wife is expecting a baby, and that’ll be our first grandchild this fall. So we expect we’ll be spending more time in Los Angeles after that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:09:41]:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I was going to say, I have an eight month old, so if you happen to hear any noises, his vocal cords are resistant to soundproofing. Congratulations. Thank you.

Richard Eisenberg [00:09:52]:

That’s a fun age. At this point.

Ryan Doolittle [00:09:55]:

It’s fun because now he’s laughing a lot and he can understand that my jokes are bad. I know that you’ve realized well, as a parent, how much you love your kids and that you need them. Have they realized they need you?

Richard Eisenberg [00:10:11]:

I think so. We’ve always had really great relations. We’re very lucky. We talk to our kids either by text or phone. Most days. They’re keeping us up to date with what they’re doing. We tell them what we’re doing. We have a trip planned to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons next week where we’re going with one of our sons and his wife. Our other son and his wife were going to come until the baby was due, and they decided the doctor decided it was best not to do that. So we certainly do stay in touch often.

Ryan Doolittle [00:10:41]:

Okay. I’m glad to hear that. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about we we got into it, but that’s how you describe your retiree, and it’s kind of another way of saying partial retirement. I don’t want to oversimplify it. And as we said, it was coined by your former colleague, Chris Farrell. It seems like you speak very highly of him. When I heard you talk about him, I just sort of dug a little deeper and I realized I hear his voice all the time on I think he’s on Marketplace.

Richard Eisenberg [00:11:09]:

Public radio. Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Doolittle [00:11:11]:

Okay, so why did you take so fondly to Unretirement? And what does that mean for you?

Richard Eisenberg [00:11:18]:

I guess I took fondly to it because I thought it gave me a chance to explore new avenues for myself. I’m learning new things. I’m writing for places I didn’t get to write before. I’m catching up with old friends who I hadn’t seen for a while. I’m the kind of guy who just likes to keep busy my senses. You are too. And so I felt like the traditional retirement just wouldn’t work for me. I would get too restless. And so the constant struggle and decisions that I’m trying to make are figuring out how busy do I want to be and am I spending my time the way I want to. And I don’t want to overdo it. And I feel like right now I’m in a pretty good place where some days I’m busy all day, some days I’m busy a little bit, some days I’m not busy at all. I feel like it’s pretty much where I was hoping it was going to be.

Ryan Doolittle [00:12:10]:

Oh, wow. Okay, so you’re nailing this.

Richard Eisenberg [00:12:12]:

Well, I wouldn’t say that we all are figuring it out. And I’ve been teaching a class on unretirement, actually, NYU asked me to teach what they call a master class on unretirement. I’ve been doing it. It’s a four session virtual class with five students who are people in their fifty s and sixty s who are all working full time but eager to start their next chapter, but a little nervous about it. So I’ve been talking with them, and in each class I bring in an expert. I’ve had some really great people talking in the class, and what I’m finding is there’s a big appetite to learn about this because there’s no real guidebook and we’re all kind of figuring it out.

Ryan Doolittle [00:12:51]:

Well, exactly. And I think so many people either think, oh, finally, I can just sit on the couch all day and then I’ll be happy, or they just haven’t thought about it enough. And then they get there and they go, what do I do? I’m unhappy. So, so great that you’re teaching people. That’s kind of why this podcast exists. And since I don’t know the answer, I’m lucky to speak with people like you. Okay. So I think in marriage and retirement I know with my parents who are both retired, my mom was really worried that my dad would just be around too much. They’ve been married for more than 55 years, 54 years, which sounds super romantic and it is sometimes, but she was basically saying, you can’t just be home all day because I will go crazy. So have you had some of that with your wife? Or maybe you are able to do that?

Richard Eisenberg [00:13:45]:

It’s been working out pretty well. I tend to come up to my home office most days and spend most of the day there. And she tends to be in the living room and the dining room where she is sometimes doing some work for People magazine or sometimes she’s reading or just enjoying herself. And we give each other space. There are times that she’s going to meet friends that she hasn’t seen in a while or has places to go. And same with me. So far, I would say we are not in each other’s faces or in each other’s hair, but we’re happy to be together and have the chance to spend more time together when there’s time to do it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:22]:

And if she ever gives you a hard time, do you ever say, I used to write for women.com, so I’m kind of an expert on I don’t say you’re not you’re not rearranging the spice rack and getting in trouble.

Richard Eisenberg [00:14:37]:

I’m not doing that. I’m not very good at that. One of the people that I interviewed and he was in my retirement class as a guest this week is Steve Lopez. And I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to meet with him yet, but he wrote this terrific book called Independence Day where he talked about it was his one year research project to figure out. He’s a Los Angeles Times political columnist and he was trying to figure out should he retire? Could he retire? How would retirement work? And he said that his wife, who’s a freelance writer, was worried about what it was going to be like for the two of them to be together all the time. And I think they are working it out, too. So it’s a challenge for couples because most times couples are not used to being all together in the same place every day, all day long. But you find ways to make that work.

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:25]:

Yeah. Wes Moss had him on his podcast, the Retire Sooner podcast, and he was great. I didn’t expect him to write a retirement book. I remember seeing the movie, the soloist. I think Robert Downey Jr. Played him, and Jamie Foxx was in that. Wes a, I’m really happy you got to talk to him. He was so okay. I want to talk a little bit about Next Avenue, which you’re still working. I guess you’re considered freelance now since you’re unretired, but was I accurate? It’s kind of considered the Sesame Street for adults. Well, yes.

Richard Eisenberg [00:15:56]:

I’d say mostly yes. When I started there back in 2011, all we knew was that the guy who ran the public television station in St. Paul, Minnesota, TPT had this idea. He said PBS should be doing something for baby boomers the way it did in the street for kids. And he was trying to figure out what that should be. And of course, he first thought it would be a television show because that’s what they do. But the more he talked to people, the more, he thought, no, probably be better as a website. So I was part of the launch team and all we knew was we were going to create this website for people over 50. At that point that meant pretty much baby Boomers. Since then, it now means Gen X and Baby Boomers because a lot of Gen Xers are in their fifty s and so website where it has five channels. There’s the Money channel and the Work channel. Those are the two that I was in charge of. There’s a lifestyle channel, there’s a health channel and a Caregiving channel and they’re publishing new articles every day in all those channels. And I feel what I’ve learned is that most people still have not heard of it but when people do hear of it and find it, they tend to really love it if they’re over 50 or they tell their parents about it. So the biggest issue there is just sort of getting the word out. But I think they do some really great work.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:11]:

Yeah. Is that something you turn to yourself now that you’re unretired? Absolutely.

Richard Eisenberg [00:17:17]:

I read it every morning and I always find something interesting there, especially if.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:21]:

You’Ve written it right.

Richard Eisenberg [00:17:23]:

Sometimes I’ve read it, but mostly I don’t.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:27]:

You’ve talked about how people who make their own choice to retire versus being forced to retire makes a big difference in the rate of happiness. So tell me a little bit more about why making your own choice matters and I think that’s what you did right.

Richard Eisenberg [00:17:44]:

I was lucky to be able to do that and some people are. Some people don’t have that luxury because their health requires them to stop working or they lose their job through no fault of their own. And so sometimes retirement is thrust on them when they weren’t really planning on it. In my case, I was lucky that I had thought about what I wanted to do and when I want to do it. And so I plotted it out and I’ve talked to a lot of people who did the same thing and what I find is they tend to be happier because they feel more in control. It’s their decision to stop working full time and to do other things and in many cases they’re healthy enough to do the kinds of things they want to do. Some have health issues and so they work around them and so that means they may not be able to travel to places they might thought of going before, but they do other things instead. I would say if it’s possible to chart your own path towards on retirement, I really encourage people to do that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:18:44]:

And you knew the time was right, you just felt it like I think maybe I want to do this now.

Richard Eisenberg [00:18:51]:

Yeah, well, it was a combination of being next avenue, ten years turning 65, being in pretty good health. I just felt like that seemed like a good time to make a switch. I didn’t want to wait until I had core issues with health that I might have one day and couldn’t do some things I wanted to do. And I felt like there were things I wanted to do, things I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing, but I wanted to look into them and so for me, that seemed like a good idea. I probably could have waited a few years. I might have been able to do it a little earlier. I think it was probably a good time for me.

Ryan Doolittle [00:19:29]:

So you didn’t worry too much about having it be the exact perfect time. You just do your best. Everyone’s kind of figured it out as they go.

Richard Eisenberg [00:19:37]:

Yeah. And we have a financial advisor and I talk with them a lot about can I afford to do it and what should I be thinking about, and we talk about when to claim Social Security and what about Medicare and all those kind of things. I think it’s really helpful to have a financial advisor to talk it through as a second opinion and see what they think, and I was happy that my advisors felt like I could do it, and so that gave me confidence to do it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:20:02]:

Yeah. And as someone you probably have, even if you’re not a financial advisor, you’ve done so much on the topic that you probably knew a lot about what to do, but you still went and sought advice on that.

Richard Eisenberg [00:20:15]:

Absolutely. Well, I want to turn to professionals. People who do this for a living, they do it all the time. They’ve got more experience in helping people manage their money and their finances and think about retirement holistically than I did, so I felt like I had something to offer, but they had even more.

Ryan Doolittle [00:20:33]:

And did your wife Liz, you did that together. Do you talk a lot together about those sorts of things?

Richard Eisenberg [00:20:41]:

Absolutely. I mean, I don’t want to make any finance decision without her, and she feels the same way. I tend to be more in charge of our investments, but I won’t make an investment decision without discussing with her. She just isn’t all that interested in it, but she’s happy to hear me talk about it, and if she’s not comfortable, then I won’t do it. I have a pretty good idea about her risk tolerance, and it’s similar to mine, so we’re usually in lockstep, I would say.

Ryan Doolittle [00:21:08]:

Well, that’s a gift. That’s really lucky, from what I can tell. You’ve talked about how it’s kind of impossible to know exactly how much free time you’re going to want in retirement or unretirement. It’s sort of a trial and error type of thing. How long did it take you to figure out or maybe you’re still figuring out I prefer this amount of free time, but I want to be doing something the other amount, I’m still figuring it out.

Richard Eisenberg [00:21:37]:

I knew only that I would want to be busy. I didn’t know how busy, and busy doing what exactly? And so there have been times where I said to myself, I’m doing too much, I need to take a little break. And then occasionally I’ll look at the calendar and see a day with nothing on it. And then I get scared because I’d feel like, well, what are we going to do with myself? I mean, I love to read and go to movies and watch TV, so I do some of the things that are solitary or with my wife, but mostly I prefer to be doing things where I feel like I’m engaged in some way. And it could be professionally, it could be mentally, it could be socially. I started going to the Y twice a week, which is something I have sort of pushed off for a long time because I just not a fan of exercise. But I know that I know I need to take core of better care of my health. And so I’m forcing myself every Tuesday and Thursday to eat in the morning to go to a class, and I’m glad I’m doing that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:22:35]:

Oh, what kind of class?

Richard Eisenberg [00:22:38]:

They call it a cardio light class. So it’s an hour where I’m basically moving around with a bunch of other people and an instructor to basically get the heart pumping by and large and that sort of thing. Nothing too strenuous, but just enough to feel like I’m making some kind of a difference in my health.

Ryan Doolittle [00:22:55]:

Yeah, I was going to ask how you stay healthy. So that’s one of the ways you exercise a couple of days a week. Did you have to change your diet or anything?

Richard Eisenberg [00:23:03]:

Well, so I have diabetes, so I changed my diet years ago when I was first diagnosed in my 40s. So I’m pretty careful with what I eat. We have a dog, so I walk my dog a lot, as does my wife, and that helps me get some exercise. It’s always tempting to want to eat foods that I know I shouldn’t eat, and occasionally I slip up, but mostly I’m pretty good about that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:25]:

Yeah. Another guest I’ve had on this show talked about walking her dog, and that was when she did a lot of her writing. Do you work out some of your articles while you’re walking the dog?

Richard Eisenberg [00:23:36]:

Sometimes I do. Sometimes I’ll have some inspiration about either something to write about or a way to write it, or an idea for a headline or a lead of a story, and then I go back to my desk and start working on it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:49]:

Okay, before we get too far to this, I wanted to say I noticed that the summer street sweeping started up in July in Westfield, so now that you’re home all the time, I wanted to remind you to move your car so you don’t need to appreciate that.

Richard Eisenberg [00:24:04]:

Yeah, well, we live across from the school, a grade school, which was always fun to see the kids playing. But it can be sometimes very loud to be working or doing a podcast or a zoom. But it’s off season now that it’s summertime, so it’s pretty quiet mostly.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:21]:

You’re about, what, 15 miles from New York City? Is that yeah, give or take.

Richard Eisenberg [00:24:26]:

It’s about a 45 minutes car bus ride. Train is a little bit longer. Yeah, about that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:31]:

Now that you have a little more time, can you and your wife go into the city to see shows or anything like that?

Richard Eisenberg [00:24:38]:

We do occasionally. Not all that often because of our dog. He needs to go out a lot and so can’t be away too long. But we try to see a show on Broadway every I see three to four months or so. We hardly ever go in. Just for a restaurant occasion, we’ll go in to see a friend that I know or have to go in for work of some kind. I’d like to be there a little more often than I am, but we try to get there whenever we can.

Ryan Doolittle [00:25:05]:

I venture to say most of our listeners have dogs. So what kind of dog do you have?

Richard Eisenberg [00:25:13]:

He’s a rescue dog. We think he is mostly Chihuahua and beagle. Chihuahua, Beagle or Cheagle, but nobody knows for sure. So that’s our best guess.

Ryan Doolittle [00:25:24]:

Okay. I love beagles. I was worried. Do they howl a lot?

Richard Eisenberg [00:25:30]:

He barks when somebody’s outside. He barks if somebody’s in the house. Who he doesn’t know. He wants to protect us. I wouldn’t call him a howler, but he’s a growler.

Ryan Doolittle [00:25:40]:

Okay. Not a howler, a growler. I know a lot of people like that. One time some friends and I were just driving through their neighborhood and we saw a Chihuahua wandering in the street. He looked, or she looked very out of it. Turned out she was old and needed help. So anyway, I’m not taking any credit for this. Friend of mine took her to the vet, got her fixed up, found her a home in Montreal. So she’s now a French Canadian citizen, was flown all the way, speaks two languages exactly. Much more cultured than I am.

Richard Eisenberg [00:26:16]:

We love having a dog, and we’re huge fans of dogs in general. And I do think if you’re retired and can do it, it’s really great to have some sort of a companion, whether it’s a dog or a cat or a bird or a fish or whatever. But dogs are great because they get you out of the house, give you some exercise. They’re usually very loving and lovable, I’d say. Our dog loves my wife, he likes me, I’m okay with that. I’ve come to peace with that. But it’s fine.

Ryan Doolittle [00:26:45]:

Okay. Yeah, they’re just mood enhancers. I think they really know how to do that. So for someone like you, who kind of well, at least from what I can tell, you were always. Doing something that you felt passionate about in your career? Not always, but you weren’t doing something you hated. So when you decided to unretire, was it just a matter of well, I’m going to cut out these few things I didn’t really ever enjoy but for the most part I was already doing what I wanted to do so I’m going to keep doing it or did you rebrand yourself, now I’m going to do this? What did that look like for you?

Richard Eisenberg [00:27:23]:

Well, I did love my job at Next Avenue but I have to say I don’t mind not having the management responsibilities that I had there in invoicing with freelancers and going to meetings and all that sort of thing, which is part of any kind of a job. So I was glad not to have that but to keep the part that I love, which is writing and editing and to have the chance now to do that for some other places and to do things that I couldn’t do before. So it’s a little rebranding but I would say I’m largely kind of doing what I was doing before just in different ways and then doing some things in addition to that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:28:02]:

Okay, that’s what I had figured. So for people that are lucky enough to have kind of found what they wanted to do while they’re working, it’s okay to just sort of maybe keep doing that but tweak it a little bit more to your liking maybe. I never liked this part of it so I’m not going to do that anymore.

Richard Eisenberg [00:28:20]:

Right? I think a lot of people that’s what they want, that’s the sweet spot for them is to keep doing the parts that they liked, not doing the parts they didn’t like, maybe not working with people you weren’t so crazy about and sometimes saying no. So that’s one of the things I had to sort of force myself into doing it on retirement, which is sometimes people said to me they would like it if I would do X with them. And I’ve said no, because I just didn’t think I wanted to work with that person, or I didn’t think that the assignment sounded particularly interesting, or it wasn’t quite right for me. But I will say whenever I do say no, which is not all that often, but sometimes, whenever I can, I try to give them somebody that I think might say yes. So if I feel like that’s not quite right for me and I know somebody who I think might be interested, I’ll tell them because I feel like if I can be helpful in that regard, great. Now that person may not want to do it or they may not want that person but at least I feel like I tried to be helpful.

Ryan Doolittle [00:29:19]:

Yeah, I don’t like telling my wife no but sometimes that means I just pretend I didn’t hear that way I don’t have to. So as we sort of wrap up here. How would people who want to know more or maybe they really love what you’re saying, and it’s really helping them figure out how to be happy as they think about retirement. Or maybe they’re already in retirement. Where can they continue to learn from you and follow you?

Richard Eisenberg [00:29:46]:

Thank you. Well, if you go to Market Watch and you just type my name, you’ll find my column. It’s called the view from Unretirement. I write it every two weeks or thereabouts so you can find my pieces there. Same on next avenue. If you search by my name, you’ll see pieces I’ve written about personal finances and work and often about aging and retirement. If you’re interested in Medicare, I’m writing for the Fortune website. They’ve got a channel called Fortune Well, and it’s mostly about health, but they’ve got a part of it’s called Aging Well. And so I’ve been writing about Medicare for them, so those are the easiest ways. And then the podcast that I do, I’ve been doing now for about five years called Friends Talk Money. I do it with two terrific co hosts. One is Pam Krueger and one is Terry Savage. We do it every couple of weeks, and it’s about personal finances for people over 50, so people might check that out, too.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:38]:

Okay, well, I hope they will. I’m sure they will. Richard Eisenberg, thank you so much for joining us on the Happiest retirees podcast. It’s been a real treat for me.

Richard Eisenberg [00:30:47]:

Oh, thank you, Ryan. It’s been a lot of fun.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:49]:

All right, well, say hi your family and tell everyone and your dog.

Richard Eisenberg [00:30:52]:

I will do that. You too.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:54]:

All right. Thank you so much.