The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

Being financially prepared for retirement doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for retirement. Dr. Gregory Charlop argues that a complete retirement plan should address another set of assets: the health and lifestyle side of retirement planning, and your ability to remain engaged with life with vitality. In this conversation, we explore the connection between longevity and retirement planning, including why work can disguise gaps in our social lives and sense of purpose, why strength becomes increasingly important with age, what to know about wearables and health metrics, the role of protein later in life, and why people need to become more proactive consumers of healthcare. But the larger message is refreshingly simple: don’t pursue longevity merely to accumulate more years. Build the health and relationships that allow you to do meaningful things with them. Dr. Gregory Charlop joins us from suburban Atlanta, Georgia. ________________________ Bio Dr. Gregory Charlop is a UCLA and Stanford-trained, triple-board-certified physician and a leading expert in longevity and performance. Dr. Greg is a sought-after international keynote conference speaker and the keynote speaker at the Barron’s 100 Hall of Fame. He is a featured guest at the Milken Institute and regularly appears on major media outlets, including FOX Business, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Forbes. Known for his common-sense approach to health, he authored four influential books on wellness, healthy homes, and burnout. As the nation’s first Fractional Chief Wellness Officer (CWO) for family offices, Dr. Greg works closely with select ultra-high-net-worth individuals, providing personalized strategies to enhance nutrition, sleep, exercise, happiness, and peak performance. His signature Family Wellness Assessment service includes personal visits to client homes, vacation residences, or yachts, where he meticulously evaluates home safety, lifestyle habits, and family goals to create customized wellness roadmaps. Dr. Charlop collaborates with family offices on the health and lifestyle side of retirement planning. Dr. Greg is a proponent of the Bitcoin Lifestyle. As a featured speaker at the Plan ₿ Forum and Max and Stacy Bitcoin Golf Invitational in El Salvador, he helps Bitcoin leaders with customized longevity, resilience, and lifestyle solutions. After spending two decades navigating the high-pressure, life-and-death environment of the operating room and consulting executives in the boardroom, Dr. Greg launched Corsica Military Solutions™. Leveraging his expertise in stress management, resilience, and burnout prevention, he brings high-performance wellness strategies directly to military leaders, drone operators, and cyber warfare specialists. With experience in the life-or-death worlds of medicine and national defense, Dr. Gregory Charlop is one of the nation’s leading experts on decision-making. His medical-grade decision framework supports the military, defense industry, and family offices. Dr. Greg also founded the Corsica Conference, a TED-style event for intellectually curious leaders committed to wellness and lifelong growth. His charitable projects include a program to encourage girls to play sports and the Women’s Sports Forum. Outside work, he enjoys traveling, learning Spanish and French with his daughters, listening to audiobooks, exploring coffee shops, and spending time with his pup, Dash. Dr. Gregory Charlop, MD, DipABLM, developed the field of Retirement Medicine™ for executives, dentists, athletes, and founders. _______________________ For More on Dr. Gregory Charlop Website Buckhead Longevity ________________________ Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love Take Charge of Your Health – Lucy McBride MD Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD How to Stay Sharp in Retirement – Dr. Majid Fotuhi _______________________ Mentioned in this Podcast Die With Zero by Bill Perkins _______________________ Wise Quotes On Retirement Readiness “People spend an enormous amount of time making sure they have enough money to retire. But do you have the health to do what you want to do? Do you have friends you want to spend time with? Do you know what you’re going to do?” On Longevity and Living Well “The point isn’t simply to live longer. It’s to be healthy enough, strong enough, and engaged enough to enjoy the years you have.” On Procrastination “The biggest tragedy is to have stuff you want to do, stuff that you could do, but you chose not to do it because you decided to do it later. And then that later didn’t come…If you over-save and then you die with money in the bank, what that means is you worked for free…Do the stuff you want to do now. Don’t push that off until later, because that later may not come.” ________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University. In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. _________________________ The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matter                      

We’re looking for a few lifelong learners to join us in a new free monthly discussion group Learn more and sign up here _________________________ Clients tell me that no matter how much they were looking forward to retirement, there comes a moment when they feel that something’s missing. After a demanding corporate career, Charles Chumley discovered that the hardest thing about retirement wasn’t giving up a title. It was losing the built-in structure of having somewhere to be and someone needing him to be there. An unlikely new pursuit helped him find his footing: building elaborate sandcastles. In this conversation, Charles shares what mornings on the beach taught him about identity, failure, creativity, and impermanence. He also explains why clarity about your next chapter is more likely to come from doing than through endless thinking, and why people approaching retirement should begin testing new interests before they leave full-time work. We also discuss his book Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches, how the question “What do you do?” changes after you retire, and why he believes you should start trying something new before you’re ready. Charles Chumley joins us from Greece. ________________________ Bio Charles E. Chumley spent three decades in corporate America before retiring to find out what the sand had to say. Since then he has been kneeling on two beaches, Playa del Carmen, Mexico and Gulf Shores, Alabama, building sandcastles before anyone else arrives and paying closer attention than he planned to. The result is Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches, a memoir in forty-four chapters that is funny in the right places, honest throughout, and ends on a beach at dawn with everything the tide could not take. Chuck is also the creator of the Paintbrush series, children’s books following Paintbrush the cat through pickleball courts, Kung-Fu masters, wise grandmothers, and America’s 250th birthday. The series has nothing to do with sandcastles and everything to do with the same belief that got Chuck to the beach every morning: that showing up and trying something new is always worth it. He lives in Roswell, Georgia with his wife Pam, who is quieter and funnier than he is. All author royalties from Every Grain Is Real are donated to Family Promise, which helps families experiencing homelessness. _________________________ For More on Charles Chumley Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches Website Free Resources – Three short guides on lessons learned you can use Sandcastles _________________________ Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD Two Grannies on the Road – Beth Sobiloff & Marcia Rothwell Purpose Driven Retirement – Jet Vertz _________________________ Wise Quotes On Creating “What I had to learn…is that I need to make something. I don’t have to manage it or evaluate things, but actually make something, and that could just be making a difference somewhere.” On “So, What Do You Do?” “I think ultimately people are not asking, ‘What’s your employment status?’ when they say, ‘What do you do?’ They’re really asking, ‘What’s something interesting about you?’” On Experimenting Your Way Forward “Learning what that thing will be for you arrives more from doing something rather than just…sitting…thinking about what you’ll do with your life…Don’t wait for the transition to find a thing. Start it before you leave so that you can have some test runs or test drives going in parallel to the existing life.”

Is optimism something you’re born with, or something you can learn? John Trauth, author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging, believes that the way we process events plays an important role in how we navigate aging, setbacks, and major life transitions. In this conversation, John shares lessons from Positive Psychology, his own experiences with adversity, and a useful framework for examining negative events using 3 questions from Martin Seligiman’s work on Learned Optimism: Is this permanent? Is it pervasive? And how much of it is personal? Leaving work to retire comes with losses; the structure that organizes your day, the community that surrounds you, and a sense of purpose that has grown over decades. John explains why anticipating those losses, and deliberately planning to replace them, can make the transition to retirement more successful. He also makes an interesting case for planning ahead for some of the realities of aging: not as an exercise in pessimism, but as a way to reduce uncertainty and free yourself to concentrate on living now. John Trauth joins us from Sausalito, California. __________________________ Bio John Trauth, MBA is a management consultant based in San Francisco and the author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging. He was born in New York, graduated from Colgate University with majors in Economics and Psychology, and proceeded to earn his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth, majoring in marketing, finance and corporate social responsibility. He has worked for large management consulting firms in both Boston and San Francisco. For the last 10 years, he has run his own consulting practice specializing in strategic planning. He and his wife Astrid lived in France in the mid-1990’s, is fluent in French, and now resides in Sausalito, California. He is co-author, with Alan Bernstein, of “Your Retirement, Your Way,” which achieved the #1 position in Amazon’s “retirement book” category , and later was rated by Consumer Reports as one of the 15 best books on retirement. John and Alan gave keynotes and seminars around the country, counseling people on planning strategically for their retirement. In writing Maintaining Optimism While Aging, John collaborated again with Alan who provided his perspectives, guidance, and experience as a renowned New York City psychotherapist working with people in major life transitions. _________________________ For More on John Trauth Maintaining Optimism While Aging Website _______________________ Other Retirement Podcast Episodes You’ll Also Love Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn Change Your Questions, Change Your Life…in Retirement – Marilee Adams, PhD _________________________ Wise Quotes On Optimism “Some people grow up in bad circumstances but still are optimistic. So, it’s really not baked into your personality as much as it is baked into your thought process. And if you can change your thought process, you can basically change whether or not you’re optimistic, pessimistic or in the middle.” On Metacognition “If you can really think about thinking, really embrace metacognition and understand why you think the way you do, then you can change how you think. But if you don’t know the why, you can’t change the how.” On Optimism & Adversity “When you’re hit with some of these things, there’s a natural tendency to feel a sense of helplessness. That’s very normal. You need to go through that. It’s like when someone close to you dies. You’ve got to grieve. You got to go through that. It doesn’t mean it has to last forever. You’re going to get through it, but you need, mentally to process that, and to be able to then pick yourself up and move forward.” ________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University. In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. _________________________ The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

What does it really mean to take charge of your health? Lucy McBride MD, believes it involves much more than tracking your numbers. Good health is also about understanding the less measurable parts: what’s happening in your life, your relationships, stress, habits, emotional patterns, and your history. Dr. Lucy McBride, a primary care physician and author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health, joins us to discuss how to become a more informed, proactive annd empowered partner in your own healthcare. We discuss the difference between control and agency, why your bio contains important health data, the “patient personality” each of us brings into the doctor’s office, when health tracking helps (and when it doesn’t) and why the transition to retirement can make structure, movement, social connection, and daily routines even more important. Lucy McBride, MD joins us from Washington DC. _________________________ Bio Dr. Lucy McBride is a board-certified internist who has practiced primary care medicine in Washington, DC, for over two decades. She is a native Washingtonian who attended the National Cathedral School before earning her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. She graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and earned a Master’s Degree in Pharmacology as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cambridge, U.K. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. McBride has become a nationally recognized voice in healthcare transformation and patient empowerment. She believes that health is not a checklist or an outcome, but rather a lifelong process that requires awareness, acceptance, and agency over what you can change. She is the author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health (Simon & Schuster, August 2026), which offers a five-step framework for patients to reclaim agency over their health. The book has been praised for bridging the gap between conventional medicine and holistic wellness, refusing false binaries and empowering patients to make informed decisions. She writes the widely-read medical newsletter Are You Okay?, which reaches over 39,000 subscribers weekly with evidence-based guidance on navigating mental and physical health in tandem. She also hosts the top-rated podcast Beyond the Prescription. Dr. McBride’s work has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She is a frequent media commentator, appearing on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Morning Joe, and PBS NewsHour, where she provides evidence-based medical advice and advocates for a more comprehensive approach to healthcare. Her mission extends beyond individual patient care to transforming the healthcare system itself. She believes that empowering individual patients creates systemic change—and that primary care relationships, enhanced by technology but centered on human connection, are the foundation of sustainable healthcare transformation. Dr. McBride lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children. _______________________ For More on Lucy McBride Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health Beyond the Prescription Podcast You can learn more about Dr. McBride here. You can subscribe to her free newsletter here. _______________________ Other Retirement Podcasts You’ll Love Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD What Matters Most – Diane Button Inside The Healthcare Heist – Jordan Grumet, MD _______________________ Wise Quotes On Agency “People often don’t realize how much agency they have over their health…When we stop fighting unwinnable battles, we then open up brain space, time, energy to then fight the battles we want to be fighting. That’s the birthplace of agency.” On Your Story & Your Health “We love collecting data. Cholesterol levels, blood pressure, body mass index, right? All the things we can measure in a test tube. But it turns out the most important data is actually something only you have access to. It’s your biography. Your biographic data matters, I would argue, even more than your biometric data, and your biographic data informs your biometric data.” On Self-Compassion “When I was able to connect the dots between her story, which is very relevant, those biographic pieces of data from when she was a kid, and her blood sugar readings, her blood sugar readings that go up when she’s stress eating and she’s not taking care of herself, that’s me handing power to the patient. That’s me saying, “Look, you have more agency than you think.” It’s not that understanding the relationship between childhood traumas and your diabetes, the knowledge alone isn’t enough, but it’s to say that there’s no GLP-1, there’s no shot, there’s no medication that’s going to practice self-compassion for you and for you to make peace with your body and to, and to feed your body the way it wants to be fed.” On Taking Charge “The idea of being the CEO of Your Health is being someone who can understand at its core where you have agency and where you do not, and knowing the difference. It sounds a lot like the Serenity Prayer, right? It’s basically the wisdom to understand where you can execute in your life, habit changes, relationship changes, whether the relationships to food or alcohol or other people or your retirement, and where you have to cede control, like you’re aging, you have a genetic predisposition to a disease you don’t like, you have medical conditions that you’d rather not have. Because it turns out that the best CEOs in the world are people who don’t try to control everything. They also don’t outsource everything to somebody else. They know the difference between where they have control and where they don’t, and then they ask for help. My book is essentially a guide to making sense of your health in a more nuanced way because you do have more control than you think.” ____________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University. In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. _________________________ The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.