Health and Wealth: How to Make Them Last

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani. Greetings to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Each week, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. And remember, you'll find this podcast and our complete library of podcasts on our sponsoring platform, SeniorResource.com. In today's podcast, we explore the challenges of making important, difficult decisions about our future well-being and who can help with these decisions. Our guest is Melinda Cruz de Burnham, a broker associate realtor. We first explore major life-threatening decisions that our guests faced years ago. These included physical, interpersonal, and professional matters that were close to derailing her career. What were the stumbling blocks, and what was her recovery like? We then put the spotlight on helping seniors assess their own roadblocks. These roadblocks may pertain to decisions about living independently, deciding who to rely on for help, and how to evaluate the risks ahead. Be sure to tune into this conversation as we take a hard look at life's tough decisions. First, a little background. Melinda came to real estate in San Diego, California, after many successful and interesting stops along the way. Melinda started as a chemist and had a successful career in technical marketing and Fortune 100 firms before choosing to stay home and raise her daughters. She eventually found her way into real estate as an investor in long and short-term rentals. She founded and ran a successful vacation rental brokerage in North Coastal San Diego and Palm Desert, California. Melinda then entered the real estate business selling residential real estate and found her next love with the help of Keller Williams Realty. Melinda is a luxury coastal real estate expert a military relocation professional, and a certified senior real estate specialist. After just 8 years in the business, she is a respected top agent in the county and a sought-after instructor and coach. Melinda, welcome to our program today.

Joe, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, you are— you're very welcome. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us maybe the highlights that brought you to where you are today. What are the touchpoints that stood out as you arrived to where you are today?

Yeah, it's funny. I think I have to update that bio because it's— I hit my 10-year anniversary.

Oh, 10 years. Okay.

In real estate. So, you know, it's funny. The journey is not linear, is it? I, you know, I don't know about our listeners, but I think one of the things that I want people to remember, and I think it's true with our health journeys too, is it's not linear. Who thought that a girl who made a decision at age 16 to study chemistry would end up selling real estate in Southern California? I'm also from a small town in New Hampshire, so I never even dreamed of the life that I've had. So I think if you look at highlights, and clearly having a family, and I didn't, I wasn't one of those people that knew that's what I wanted until I had it. And then, so having the girls, And I think probably the day or days that I traveled first west of the Mississippi and then in the South and then internationally, I think travel changed everything for me. So if there's turning points in my life, that would be it. And then there's been this whole transformation really since turning 50, which is why I'm here. And I am almost on the eve of my 60th birthday. So I'll turn 60 with the turn of the year and the beginning of next year.

That's a good round number. Yeah, it is not a straight, flat, linear process. The trajectory is always up and down and turns right and left, and a lot of unexpected surprises that come along. So tell us about the challenges. When you and I spoke earlier, you mentioned there are a lot of challenges, personal challenges. How did you face them and how did you overcome them in your past?

Yeah, it's funny. I don't think I had the consciousness of personal challenges. I come from a nice, normal, lower-middle-class background. I went to college, you know, I went to graduate school on company dollar. I've lived a safe, reasonable life. And yet I woke up at almost 50 years old. Actually, it would have been— yeah, almost 50 years old. And I needed to now change my life. Go back to work, make six figures again, and I was more than 100 pounds overweight. And I had been medicated for clinical depression at that point for maybe close to 10 years. So there was a lot going on that I wasn't dealing with in that journey. So overcoming the obstacles— where do you want to go with that? Where do you want to start with that?

Yeah, well, let's talk about, uh, overcoming them. I mean, we all struggle with the challenges and sometimes we kind of dig deep and we can find that fire inside us. What helped you overcome the problems?

Well, I think first we have to, uh, I have to frame it. My father died at 66, so I would have been pretty young at that point. I had young children at that point. So I have a family history of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, a little bit of cancer. Bad cholesterol, blood pressure, all that kind of stuff. Okay, so there's a family history there that I was well aware of. Um, oh, also family history of mental illness that I wasn't necessarily as aware of, but, but became so later. Um, so like I said, I kind of woke up. I was forced to go back to work financially for my family situation at the time, and I'd been out of that workforce, the Fortune 100 workforce, for a long time at that point. I kept my skills up. I'm a lifelong learner. I volunteered. I did some consulting work. I had my vacation rental brokerage, right? But I shut that down just post-Great Recession. I decided, with an aging mother who was, who was nearby, with teenage daughters, and with a household that had to be managed, and that clinical depression, I didn't want to do it anymore. The Great Recession had taken it. And anyway, I needed to go back and I needed to make 6 figures, and I had this broker's license. And I had once said, which is where it's funny, we don't know how life is going to turn, I went and said, I will never ever sell real estate. Okay. I basically gave away my vacation rental brokerage to other agents who then sold all of those homes at some point. I never wanted to sell again. I was in chemical sales in my early 20s, and that's where I started gaining the weight. I used food as a coping mechanism for all the harassment and different things in that industry that I went through. And, you know, that's where I started putting on that buffer. So anyway, here I am. I joined company Keller Williams. It's the largest real estate brokerage in the world. Independently, it's privately owned. It's not traded. So I joined Keller Williams under a little bit of duress, and little did I know this was probably going to save my life. I don't know that I would have any opportunity to live to 100, never mind live this quality of a life, never mind even 70. Who knows? Had I continued on that path. And we talk about what resources. I found myself surrounded by new people, new people who valued me, new people who had a positive mindset, who had positive self-talk, positive external talk. And I started to believe in that again. And I started to— and I had already started looking at alternatives. I had sleep issues. All the things compound, Joe, like one thing after another compounds, compounds, compounds. So you don't even know what the root cause is anymore. And you wake up and you don't feel good every single day and you don't know why you don't feel good. And then you take an antidepressant to feel better about that and then you take a sleeping pill to fall asleep and then you need something else for the next thing. And the next thing you know, you're numb, right? So I stopped being numb and there's visualization and a course that took place. This is probably the changing point. If I go back, there was a course called BOLD. It was an 8-week conditioning course put on by the coaching mechanism of our company.

And say the course name again.

Bold. Bold. Bold. It's within Keller Williams, put on by MAPS Coaching. It's very intensive. It's mindset and it's real estate. It's habits, but it started with mindset. It was very intense. And the instructor walked us through a visualization. Now, mind you, I'm almost 50 years old or about there and probably in my late 40s, and I've never done visualizations before. And I've never imagined my life past about maybe 55 or 60. My ex-husband's and my plan was always, you know, he's a little older than me. When he retired, I'd probably be about 55 or 60, and then we'd do this. So I had a vision of what we'd be doing in our 50s and maybe even our early 60s. But they told us to visualize ourselves 30 years in the future. So at 50 years old, I'm visualizing myself as an 80-year-old woman. The 80-year-old woman's walking down the mountain. And the 50-year-old woman is walking up. And this is an epiphany for me because I've never seen that old lady in my mind. And what would that woman want to say to you? And what she wanted to say to me was, "You've got a lot of life ahead of you. Do you really want to live like this the rest of it?" And I bawled, Joe. I'm in a room of 100 of my peers and I'm crying. It was— I even get choked up now. And this is a long time ago now. It's almost 10 years now. That was the first time I saw myself as an older woman, not 100, but 80. I thought about what my life would look like then. And I think maybe that's the lesson here is we have to look— what do we want? I know what you're involved with. What do I want my life to look like? I don't want to live to 100 if it looks like my father's life did at 66. Or even my mother's at 77. She passed away right before her 78th birthday. My parents were old from as long as I can remember. I see photos of my parents young, but at 50 years old, my parents were old. Okay, so I don't want that quality of life. I want so much more. So that visualization said to me, if I first had to be able to imagine it, right, before I could start to live it, I was like, what do I want my life to look like? Unfortunately, that ended up ending in divorce because my now ex-husband wasn't coming along for that journey with me. In fact, when I left him, he said, um, he said, I thought— I just thought we'd always live like this. I never thought you'd leave. And he never would have left. I had asked him to leave 4 times that year. Wasn't, you know, anything bad. It was just we hadn't visualized our marriage, you know. We didn't see where it would be, and we didn't get it. We never got it to that point. We had stopped living in joy or believing that we deserved that. And I, when I finally left, I left because I was like, we both deserve joy, because it does start with that. I believe firmly it's mental health. I, I don't wish we didn't have a term mental health. It's health, right? So our moods, our emotions, all of that are so intertwined. So it started with that. Around the same time, we had a cottage back east in the coast of Maine. And I'm sitting there and we have no technology when we're there, although we may have— we did let technology in enough that we could email and work. This is 2015, July 2015. And I'm sitting there and I'm there for the shortest period of time I've ever been there. And I am my highest weight ever. And I'm tired. And there's another agent at our office that is our health ambassador because the only company I've ever worked with where the CEO stands up on stage and says, if you don't have your health, you can't do this job because it's very, very intense. It's a hustle. It's an energy— you know, there's a lot of energy required for it. So we had a health ambassador and he was also a personal trainer. And while I was sitting there feeling fat— and I don't mean fat in this judgmental way, it's in an unhealthy way— I thought, I have got to make a change. I'm still married at this point. I've got to make a change. And so I email him right then in the moment. You know, the 3— who is that? Mel Robbins, the 5-second rule or the 3-second rule. She says, don't wait or you'll talk yourself out of something. I emailed him in that moment and I said, I arrived back in San Diego on XYZ date. Can we please set an appointment? I've got to do something about this. And so he coached me through. I went through keto diet. Training versus training, all of that. And I was going to the chiropractor, so now I was sleeping and I was off of the Ambien. I don't think I was off the antidepressants yet. Insisted that I get my hormones checked as a middle-aged woman. He said, I won't work with you till you get hormones checked. And I had, and we— that was, that was all okay at the time. And I lost about 40 pounds doing that. I kept that 40 pounds off and I felt great.

Yeah. So a couple of big experiences, I mean meaningful experiences, the visualization episode where you could foresee what you could be like and what you would hear from your 80-year-old self as she's coming down and you're going up. So that's a very provocative experience. I've done those with groups. So, and then the coaching, and of course, you know, you mentioned a lot of the negative thinking and the negative self-talk, and I think that's really important to take a look at, observe, and see what we're doing to ourselves and how we were kind of limiting our performance just because of this negativity. Can you share just a few of those negative thoughts?

Well, I think— yes, absolutely. I think it's important to remember that, you know, all the talk about you are the 5 people that you surround yourself with, whether that's financial or mental or growth or business. So I had changed my surroundings to some extent, so I now had other people that I saw the self-talk. I'd have thoughts like, this is a business thought. I remember vividly walking out of the office one day and we had our receptionist who was at the desk and I was headed to a networking meeting. I had built my rental business on networking and now I was going to do this with real estate. And it must have been 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I needed to drive from Del Mar to Oceanside. And I looked at my— gosh, I don't want to go to this. I hate these things. I'm a social introvert, all that kind of stuff. And you met me, I never did that, right? Um, and he said, this is a 20-something-year-old kid, but who had better mental imagery than I did. Stop. If you're gonna go with that attitude, don't go. Just don't do it. I'm like, why? What are you talking about? Because what are you going to attract with that attitude? You're going to get exactly what you expect— social anxiety and poor quality interactions. He says, if you go, you have to go with a positive mental attitude. And from that moment forward, I changed the way I looked at that, changed the way I looked at things. So it's that, it's that discipline, it's that talk. Um, I still struggle with it today. My 15-year-old insecure girl actually came out in a telephone conversation this morning with someone, and I ended up leaving the conversation with a little tear in my eye and then needed to sit and meditate and think on it about what that was. That was a 15-year-old girl that you know, felt like she wasn't enough. You know, it would be the dodgeball conversation if you're thinking about guys or younger kids, you know, the last kid picked for dodgeball. And instead, having to have the conversation with myself even today that I'm enough and that I'm worthy and that I don't have to fit in, I can just be me. Yeah, that's at 59 years old. It's constant. And depending on what you do for a living, if you're still working, and even, I guess, even more so if you're not, It's what are you saying to yourself? And I think one of the good litmus tests would be, would you say that to your best friend? Would you say that to your child? Mm-hmm. Yeah. To your husband or to your wife or even to your dog. Right. Some people speak worse to themselves than they do to their animals.

Yeah.

You've got to be really careful with what you put in your brain.

Yeah. Yeah, of course. And it's so easy to fall into that and we have to like I said, observe it and monitor it because that's the only way to change it. And look at a different, you know, reframing or, you know, giving ourselves a different perception of that event. Like going off to that event instead of with a negative mindset, because that would only pull out the bad things there. You go with a positive mindset and you pull out the good things there, right? I mean, we're looking for, we're going to find. If we're looking for What's wrong, we'll find that. If we're looking for what's right, we'll find that too.

So if we take that to our bodies, okay? I can sit— this morning I just did stairs down at the cliffs of the beach. I ran— ran is a euphemism for what I do, but sets of stairs. I could focus on, you know, I broke a toe a week ago, that my toe is kind of sore, or that I had a blister from dancing at a wedding. That weekend, or that I forgot my sunglasses, or I forgot a jacket because it's cold, right? Or I could choose to focus on why I went, and I went there because I needed a mental reset after that little episode this morning, the truth. And I knew I needed to be grounded, and I knew that physical activity would get me that energy boost that I needed and a pattern interrupt from the negativity. So instead, I went there, and it's overcast, The surf was huge, and this big smile lit up on my face because I know myself well enough to know what I need. But that's only from this journey that I've learned that. And you want to talk about some of the resources, that's because of the knowing the resources, spending the time to get really good at this. And some people are there, you know, I envy these people that have grown up with that positive mindset, listening to Jim Rohn and all of that. I didn't. I had to press reset. And you asked, I'm jumping ahead, but one of the big takeaways I want for your audience is that you can press reset over and over and over. I get really frustrated when I see my colleagues who are worn down. This is a tough job I work in, in real estate. It's tough. And this is the toughest year most people have seen in 20 years. And I see them tired and overweight and achy and needing this and needing that, but they say, "Ah, I'm just old." Like, no, I refuse to accept that. I will age gracefully, but I will age on my terms to the best of my ability. Whatever gets thrown my way, I'll age, but I'm gonna do it on my terms and the best that I can.

Yeah, of course. And it is that motivation and drive and fire that's inside all of us. And sometimes it— I think it feels like it's gone or it's blocked, and we've lost that resilience. We don't have that self-determination anymore. But I maintain it's always there. We just have to, you know, unblock it or get back in touch with it. It's how it doesn't go away. It feels like it's gone, but it— I maintain that it's always there. So, um, shifting over to you know, the audience of 50+, 55+, what are some of the tough decisions and struggles that maybe seniors experience as they're, you know, facing their advancing years? We talked about downsizing and maybe a loss of a spouse, or what are some of those, some of those tough decisions that they're struggling with in your experience?

So, What I see a lot there, and there's some new ones coming too. Okay, we're living longer. And this means that our money has to last longer. This means that our needs change. There's what, 45? If we look at senior from 55 up, that's 45 potential more years that we need to be able to support ourselves. And it's getting more and more expensive. So what decisions do we have to face? And we're no longer— it used to be you lived in your house. Until you died or you went in a home or you went in with the family. Right now, there's so many other options and there's things happening. Like, I don't know if I coined this word or heard this word, but it's gray divorce.

I called it gray divorce. Sure.

Gray divorce. And there's some crazy statistic about divorces now, the age over 59. Instead of a spouse dying, And let's be honest, divorce is like your spouse dying in many ways, right? And, but these two people starting over and now they've got to secure housing and new friends and new routines and new everything. So I think this is a big issue we've got to look at is how do we care for ourselves and how do we, you know, it was easy to make friends when your kids are little or when you work in an office and you have new people. How do you make new friends now when you're basically starting over and probably at least one of the two people is moving locations? So I think some of the struggles are in that, and that it comes in in real estate, honestly, because you've got this nice home they've lived in for 30 years and now they have to sell it or sell, or one has to buy out the other. And there's no longer the kids aren't in the house anymore, so there's no longer that Oh, that spouse gets to stay with the house because they're going to have the kids at the house. So I've seen a lot of those kinds of sales. And then it's never— it's never easy from there because you're ending up in something smaller, something less than, because you're dividing that asset in two. So as an agent, I help to navigate that, and that's divorce and aging. And then, of course, you know, if a spouse passes away, I think we have a tendency to stay in our homes too long because I see them over and over and over. The maintenance deferred. And in America, our homes are our biggest assets. I saw a stat before the pandemic hit, so now this number would be even bigger. It's 65% of America's wealth in their home. So for us to fund ourselves to 100 we're going to have to include the equity that we have in our homes. When a financial planner works with most people, they don't include the real estate. This is the primary home in that plan, yet that is the security, the financial strength that I see. I take my mother as the example. That's why I got into senior real estate, was my own mom. My parents had bought a home in New Hampshire in 19— I think '58 on the GI Bill, which was then— it was called the GI Bill, now it would be the VA loan. And, um, they stayed in that home. My father passed away. My mother stayed there until she was probably 71, 70-ish, until she had one too many episodes health-wise, and my sister couldn't go help her. She was too far away. And I finally convinced her to come to California. She couldn't go to where my brothers lived because she had COPD. She was smoking. So she can go live— my brothers live in the mountains, both of them live in the mountains in Colorado and Utah. So what we were able to do though, and I wasn't selling real estate at the time ironically, but it was their smart investment in the home and not whittling down the equity over the years but maintaining the home that allowed my mother then to live a life that was not a burden on me financially. And most of us don't want to become burdens on our children. That was my grandmother's biggest worry, was outliving her money. That was my mother's greatest worry, was outliving her money. But because of the house, that's often how we get around that. Because we all know the public resources aren't going to get us.

Yeah. So you recommend accessing that equity, that home equity, and using that to foster moving into another location.

I don't recommend it for everyone. I recommend that you work with somebody that understands the different options. There's reverse mortgages available, there's reverse mortgage for, for downside or for a purchase, there's downsizing, there's age in place. You know, we know from our networking group, we, we know people who help you put up the right guardrails and get rid of the tripping hazards. There's options now, there's amazing options now in Southern California and California in general to build accessory units or granny flats on your kids' properties or vice versa. Build them on your property, move into it, and then the kids live in the big house. So there's some amazing opportunities to meet somebody that understands those, which is when we talk about the resource of my profession as opposed to just my personal passion on how to do it. But it was seeing my mom and being so grateful for the money because there wasn't enough in their 401s for a good quality of life that wasn't depending on me. Until the end. And, and, uh, ironically, when she moved out to Southern California, the joke my ex-husband used to tease her and say, 'Georgia, I thought you told us you only had 2 years left,' because her health was really bad when she moved. And the blessing in that is, with an alpha daughter like me, we were able to get her medications and get everything cleared up. And plus now she had— and I think this was another point I wanted to make— now she has something to live She had more purpose. She wasn't lonely. Isolation is the death of all of us. I don't care if you're 30 or 20 or if you're 98. Isolation is an issue for us. We've got to be really careful not to do that.

Yeah, I think you've outlined a number of really good options that someone has, whether they're still married or maybe widowed or divorced and separated. A lot of options. And it doesn't always mean selling. It can mean staying in your own home or the ADUs, as you mentioned. What happens when, when we're feeling stuck, we don't know where to turn? Who do we go to? Who can someone go to if they're looking for some answers, some solutions?

You mean specifically around living as, as somebody, somebody in our group, I think, calls themselves a professional unstucker. And you'd be surprised, okay, the, biggest issues— I just did a business planning clinic yesterday on senior segment of our business. The biggest issue preventing most of us from moving to whatever is appropriate is our stuff. And it's not really our stuff, it's what our stuff represents. So I think that you've got to work with somebody who's going to respect that. The other issue is that We get other people like, we want our autonomy, right? I don't care if I'm 50 or I'm 90, I want my autonomy as long as I'm still able, and I don't want my children bossing me around. And we know that role reversal happens even though they may know that. So you've got to go to a trusted outside who understands how to work with it. And the first place to start is somebody who at least has their senior real estate specialist is. Not because it teaches us that, I'll be honest. What it shows is it shows a specific dedication to that segment and a specific intent. And, you know, gotta reach out to somebody who's passionate about that. And you have to make sure that they're not just trying to sell the house. Yeah.

I think that's such a valuable point there, Melinda, because formerly, realtors would help with the listing and find other comparable sales in the neighborhood and all of that and help you price your house or help you find a new location. It's so much more than that now, isn't it? I mean, as you say, as a senior specialist in real estate, do you look at all different moving parts? There are so many different pieces involved. That brings so much more value to this relationship that you can offer people and your peers can offer to the clients because it's so much more than what's the best price I can get for my house, right?

There's a lot of agents and we're not all created equal. And I think the first— when I ran my first in-person Serving Senior Mastermind for agents. I ran it in Texas, I think, at a conference. And we were talking and I expected something very different. And what we found out was our commonality was a passion for helping. We had all had some personal story of whether it was elder abuse or financial success or saving tax dollars or whatever it was. You've got to— and you'll feel that passion when that person walks in the door. And especially with the older of us seniors, you know, that more silent generation who was taught, and even the older baby boomers were taught to just defer to our authority. And at that time, a while ago, realtors were held in very high esteem, very much like a doctor, that if we said this is the way it is, well, then that must be the way it is because they're the expert and not question it. I encourage your listeners to question it because we are not all created equal. So you need to make sure it's somebody who's a fiduciary that's going to put your needs above them. I might go meet with you, Joe, and leave your house and say, you know what, you're in a single-story home in a great neighborhood. You're still taking great care of it. I want to get someone in here that's just going to help you make it safe. And I know they're going to pull up the throw rugs and put bars in your, in your shower, right? Different, different things like that. Or they might just even educate you that, you know, the buttons, that kind of thing that can help us live independently. But you know what? I am confident that that'll come back, whether it's referrals from your friends and family or when the time comes for you to move and you say to your daughter, no, that's the agent I want to work because of that. Yeah.

Yeah. As my, one of my advisors once told me, there's many different types of coin and it doesn't always come in the form of dollars, but it comes in other ways. So, um, let me test your, um, your, your skills here. And how do we make our wealth last? What's your advice? You're not a financial advisor. How do you make your wealth—

not a financial advisor.

Yeah.

Um, how do you make your wealth last? Well, I think first off, it comes with your, your expenses. Okay. So we all have whatever earning power, yet we have to look at our expenses, especially as we make big transitions in life. And we have to be willing to do the hard things. In my business, we call it red light, green light. And let's see, it's business planning season right here. And I've got a green highlighter, a pink highlighter, and a yellow highlighter. And I go through both my personal and my business expenses. When it's a normal market, I do it once a year. When it's a shifting market like right now, I do it more frequently. And I take a look at those and I say, okay, what ones are absolutely positively necessary? And what ones could I reduce and what ones are optional? And then it doesn't mean I'm going to cut them all. I have a friend that used to shut off his credit cards once a year because it forced him to get rid of those auto subscriptions. Now credit cards keep those subscriptions going for convenience, unfortunately, but that was one of the ways he managed it. And I thought, wow, that's kind of brilliant, um, to do that. We have to look at all those little things that have creeped in, you know. Can we cut afford to cable or whatever it is, DirecTV. Housing, if you don't own your home, because not everybody owns their home, and I recognize that too. Do I really need this big house? Could I live somewhere for less money and, and be saving there? But as far as, you know, making your money last, at some point if you own your home, you're gonna have to pay for cable. You really are, unless you're— and now if you're wealthy, and that means that it's usually people who have taken a chance through their lives and bought a couple rentals. We all— real estate is a great path as well. Rental real estate is another way to become financially independent. So I do have clients that I help with a strat— there are tax saving strategies for when you get tired of toilets, tenants, and trash. Because it's exhausting. That's why I got into this business, and I no longer own any single-family home rentals that I have to manage. My money that's in real estate is somewhere— is elsewhere. I still have to say that I'm not the owner of record. I'm not on the title, okay? And I am not taking care of the toilet that overflowed at midnight while I'm in Colorado at my nephew's wedding. True story. So you have to work with a professional that can help you look at that. Because a lot of Southern Californians are coming into a problem with more capital gains than the capital gains exclusion. So now how do I help you keep that wealth in your primary residence instead of losing 40% of it to taxes in here? I mean, it's pretty serious. So there are strategies that we can work through, but you've got to have financial people that understand that. And most financial planners don't know anything about real estate. They know about stocks and bonds. So you've got to have a team of people that you trust that are going to put you— and you're going to be their fiduciary. You have to be willing to work together as a team too.

Yeah, of course. And the senior specialist— yeah, the senior specialist really has those advisors on the team that you can bring in and you can recommend to to the client rather than, you know, flying blind. So that's, that's really critical to have somebody who specializes in the 55+ market. So, you know, you know who's around.

I want to give you a funny story of how important those people are. A colleague of mine has a listing right now that's a successor trustee. So it's the children, but the parents have passed. And it's a townhome, and they brought in an estate salesperson, not the one she recommended. And the estate salesperson sold everything in the house, including the refrigerator, the range, and the dishwasher. And do you know how much money that he netted? $800. Cannot replace any one of those appliances. $800. And the appraiser may very well require that a range be put in there before you can close because it's not an operational home without a range. So it's so important that you have the right people on your team. That just cost that family probably several thousand dollars.

Yeah, it costs a little more than the $800 that they made.

The wrong, the wrong Yeah.

Well, we've covered a lot of ground here today, Melinda, but I, you know, I'd like to ask what's the main takeaway for the listeners on our program today? You know, we talked about some personal issues of yours and how important it is to have the right specialty working with seniors. What's the main takeaway? What would you hope our audience remembers?

I think it really— health is wealth. Okay. We want— I wanted specifically, we talked about, you know, I want to talk about health and wealth. Without the first, how do you have the second? None of the money in your home, none of the money in your bank account matters if you don't feel good. So it really comes down to that. And I would even say I would rather die poor than, you know, live unhealthy. I know that sounds crazy for somebody in real estate whose business is in that, that wealth segment of life, but, you know, it's Yeah, I just came up with that off the cuff. I'd rather die poor.

Well, it did, uh, it did. That's important. It's, um, it puts the spotlight on our lifestyle and taking care of our health. And yeah, the wealth is important, but maybe it's hard to do one without the other, but maybe health takes a little bit more of kind of a relative preference over the wealth.

And it really starts with the mental side. It really does.

Good stuff. It looks like we're out of time for today though. Before I wrap up, I just want to remind my listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for my email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. You'll also see an option to contact me with your questions and comments. I welcome your feedback. Melinda, thanks so much for being a guest on our show today. For those who might want to contact you, how can they do that?

Um, best is my phone is 858-848-7555.

Okay, a website or any—

yeah, it's, um, melinda.fredsedgroup.com. So I'm sure you'll have that, uh, in your Follow-up links.

Okay.

It's a little bit, little bit tricky. So, you know, it's easy to find. Punch my name in on the internet. I'm all over the place.

Yeah. Okay. Melinda@fredsedgroup.com.

Yes, sir.

Okay. Well, thanks very much. We appreciate your time and your insights and your sharing your experiences. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.