Aging, Gracefully (Mostly)

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this new podcast called "We Should Probably Edit This." But we won't.

Hello.

Hi.

How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

I'm good.

All right. We're going to talk about age and getting older.

And getting older? No way, Jose.

I think— aren't we looking younger? We're not looking older, are we?

I think, um, no.

Yeah, there's— look, there's stuff going on up here.

Yeah, I have to do some serious female lifting to really push back the time. Of when you were in your 20s. When you're in your 20s, you really don't think about what your face is going to look like when you're in your 60s.

And I just turned— I just turned 60 yesterday.

Yay! Joining the, the, uh, joining your—

what crowd? What crowd is that?

It's on the forums where it says, are you 55 to 59, or are you 60 to 64? That's the second box. You have to check off that second box.

Well, it makes you— it makes you really think. I have to— I have to say that as you— as you hit different milestones, you start to reflect on where you've been, and more importantly for me right now, where am I going?

Where are you going? I don't know where you're going. I don't know where I'm going. You just don't know. I think when you're in your 20s, everything is like fresh and new, and it's a lot of adventurous things. I mean, we got married early. I mean, we were in our— I was 23.

We were 23.

Yeah, we were both 23. Yeah, yeah, we were both 23 when we got married.

You were going to be 24.

That's right. No, that was right. I, I turn in September, you're in May, so we got married in June. So at that moment in time, we were both 23.

That's right.

So early 20s, young to be married. Um, I think there was so much better—

you don't know what you're into— what you're in for, I should say.

Uh, well, you probably don't know what you're in for, but your parents got married young, so you getting married at 23 didn't seem like—

at least our parents were that way. Both of our parents They got married in their, in their early 20s.

I mean, my mom got married when she was 19. So it's a, it's, it's a different time period. When you and I got married, it was still acceptable, whereas now you look at people in their 20s, you're like, no, don't get married, wait.

I think it depends. It really depends.

No, I think you need to wait.

It depends.

Well, you still have lots to, lots to do. Are things that maybe not so much lots to do, but things to figure out. That, that's what someone does at 60.

Have you figured it all out now?

I have figured out certain things about myself. Yes, I think so. I think I'm a little bit more wiser for time.

Yeah, I think, I think experience and time really, um Educates you.

It does, it does educate you. It does, it helps you put into perspective what's important and what isn't important and kind of helps you figure out where you want to go. And to some extent, you don't know. No, you just don't know.

You don't know.

You don't know. If you had asked me when I was in my 40s what it would be like when I would be 60, I'd probably sit back back and say I, I don't know. Hopefully I would, I would have said to you I'd be close and ready for retirement.

But do you really want to retire from a job?

Yes, I do. From doing something else that intrigues me or that keeps me moving or keeps me busy? No. But from working for somebody else? Yes, I do. I do. Um, and probably one of the things that, you know, if I sat back and if I was really going to ask myself something in my 40s, now that I'm 60, I would have said to myself, girl, you better get your act together and start saving some money and put a lot of money away and pay yourself first.

That's probably the one thing that we definitely didn't learn early on.

No, we did a lot of things.

I mean, it's like when you're in your 20s and you're —You always think you have time. —Yeah, you think you have time, and you think that, you know, you can wait to save, you know, when you start making more money. But if you just— but that's probably the one thing that I didn't learn very well.

We both didn't learn it really well. We both made mistakes even in our 20s when we were married, even in our 30s when we were married. I think the one good thing we did is we pushed to buy the first house we ever got, ever had. And that just led to us buying— this is our third house. So it gave us the opportunity that we knew you could do it once. And the good thing is, is once you figured out you could do it once, it's that much easier the second time and the third time. Whereas when you're first starting out, you're thinking to yourself, wow, how am I going to make this work? Or can I really do this? And once you take that leap and you do—

well, we didn't think we could buy the first house, you know, we really didn't. We thought it was like wishful thinking in a way.

I think it was wishful thinking till we realized that we needed to have a tax break from having to pay the IRS money. So we had to figure out how can we, how can we bring some of our own money back in.

We weren't, we weren't ready at the time to buy a house, but we We did. We embraced it.

I, I probably, like in most of our relationship, pushed you along to say, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this. Because I, I realized that we could still do it. And even though I didn't have a full-time job and I was at home raising children, we could still do it, right? Um, And we did, we did, we made it happen. But those are the kind of things you, you look back at, right? And you say to yourself, when I was in my— I think we bought that house and we were in our 30s, our first house. Benjamin was born when we— I was 26, 27.

We were right about 30. Yeah. We were in the late 20s, maybe right at 31 when we first bought our house. So what else about age do you think— have you been reflecting on lately? Have you been reflecting on anything about age lately? I have been, just because I feel like I've been meeting that milestone that's there. I think the part that I struggle with the most with age is just things don't quite work the way they used to work in a number of areas. And then, you know, we've already talked about trying to lose weight. You know, that's one of them that just does— just food just hits you differently. And right now, even with you and I, we've learned that we process food differently.

We're not in sync. No, we're not in sync.

We might be in sync in other things, but not in that. Maybe that should—

maybe that should just right in itself just kind of say it's okay if you're not in sync with each other. It's It's, you know, your body and my body. Theoretically, we're different people, and I'm a woman and you're a man. Yeah, fundamentally there are differences in that. Completely correct. Correct. Yeah. So what else you've been thinking about?

Well, I just been thinking about, you know, what I've done with my life so far and really where I want to take it now. And that's— and that's— I want to make these next several years as I'm working in my job fulfilling, and I want to actually enjoy what I'm doing instead of feeling like drudgery of work, you know. I want to actually embrace it. I mean, I like my job anyways, but I also want to start thinking about what's after working, right? You know, and that to me is being able to help others and feel good about doing that. You know, at the same time, I wanna make money doing it as well. So.

Well, the truth of the matter is we still need to make money. Correct. We still need that income. We still need to do those things.

We are in that. Well, if we want to have a certain lifestyle, we need to slow down.

If we want to have, yes. When we're 70, because that's how long we're going to have to work until we can collect Social Security.

That's our track right now, is 70s.

And even then, even then, when I did the math and I looked at our lifestyle of what you currently have now and what you're hoping to have, um, how much do you realistically need in order to live the way you want to live? Social Security is not going to cut it. We are— we have to double what Social Security is, is what we would be bringing back. Probably more than that, you know. It's a good double, a little bit more than double, but not extravagantly more than double. But we know what—

if we want to do some certain things, like if we want to travel more, if we want to do things—

that's part of the budget. That's part of the budget. If you did— if any of you have been out there, if you follow Mel Abraham, he has this this, uh, lifestyle estimator. And I took the lifestyle estimator, and you take it for where you are now and where you want to be 10 years from now. And if you're ready to retire, or even just figuring out what your lifestyle is now and what is then, because theoretically some of the things that you shouldn't have in 10 years, like the house should be paid for, um, for us anyway, because if you depending upon when you do it. But so like the house would be paid for, there'd be things that we no longer would owe. But then on the flip side, you have to sit back and say, okay, I want to travel more, so how much is my travel budget? How much is my lifestyle budget? How much is then your regular operating budget? And when you do all of that, there's, there's an equation and it comes up with them with a number, and that's how much you need to have every month in order to live that particular lifestyle, right? Um, so I did that. I gauged it. I said, okay. And it included travel and included lots of other things. Yeah, well, you haven't shared that with me. You did it once before, you just don't remember what you did because we compared your number and my number. Okay, we did it. We just did it a long time ago, but I did it again recently.

We need to do— that's something you probably should revisit. Every— at least you should revisit it every year.

You should revisit that. Yes, should be part of your yearly planning. Where am I at? What am I doing? And I think that's probably the one thing different now that I would say wasn't really an issue when you're in your 30s and your 40s. Because if you have children, right, you're in your 30s and your 40s, you're just struggling with kids. You're just dealing with kids. You're just dealing with that whole life is your children and all the messiness and the goodness that they bring. But then as they get older and they go through college or they leave home— maybe they don't go to college, but let's say they leave home— then you're kind of sitting back saying to yourself, okay, now they're not around. You are financially no longer responsible for them. So then you got to figure out, okay, now what are we going to do?

And what do we need? What are we going to do?

Well, we're, we're definitely going to be late-time retirees, um, and, and pushing that to its limit, uh, that's for sure. And I think we're just trying to figure out what we're wanting to do for that. I'm looking at what I'm going to do when I'm 70. What's going to happen when I'm 70?

The goal that you're setting now is to kind of like, that's the transition time?

That's my— that's, that's what I would say is my next demarcation line.

And that's more or less retirement?

That's, that's retirement from a job. Okay. That's not—

but not from something you want to be doing?

Not from something I'm going to be doing, because I don't, I don't believe that as you get older You still need to be as active, if not more active, than you were when you had your kids and they were home and you were running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Well, that was survival mode. No, this, this is—

I'm saying back then it was survival mode. You're surviving the kids, you're surviving the job, you're surviving just running the house. It's like you're not necessarily planning for where you're wanting to go or what you're doing. You're just in the middle of it. I call that the messy middle.

It is the mess, you know, when you're raising kids. But I'm saying is, is that that same level of activity is what you're going to need to carry on when you get older. It's not a matter of retiring and sitting back and watching TV or gardening. It's something else.

It's— gardening could keep you active if you're doing a farm, if you're outside and you're dealing with other people.

Other people are what is what's going to keep you going. Other people are what's going to make you get up the next day and go and do something else. The activity has to be outside of your home.

Well, okay, it doesn't have to be outside. No, it just should not be inside the house. Correct, correct. Well, at least part of it. You could still have a— you could still be doing things, you know, like working from home, but you also need to include that social aspect, right? You need the social aspect. You need to be out there. With your friends. You need to have a good friend circle.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a lot of friends either. No, it could just be a few, you know, key people that you enjoy hanging out with. And because let's face it, as grown-ups, that's probably a little bit more of a challenge in finding friends when you're older. When you're younger, I think some of it just naturally happens. And when you're real younger, your friends, because of your circumstances— you go to the same school, you have the same class, you live on same block type of deal. But as we get older, that's not it. But the good thing now is that I'm 60, I get to check off that other box, which is what else is out there for 60-year-olds? Where is the best place to retire? You know, what is that 55 and older community all about?

Which, you know, yeah, I would say, I mean, I mean, this weekend kind of started out with us going to the city, and you kind of drug me along to see Mel Robbins.

I did. I took you to go see Mel. She was doing her tour on the— her Let Them Theory, which is a book she just wrote.

What is that theory? Well, I think I know now that I've been there with you.

Well, the theory is more or less not necessarily working yourself up about what other people's thoughts or what other people are doing really dictate how you react to it. And a great example that she gave in the book was, you know, she had— she was going through her Instagram account and she saw a bunch of her friends going out, and she got very upset that they all went out but they didn't invite her. They didn't ask her to be a part of the group, and she got upset about it because she felt that you know, there was— they, like, they, they did something behind her back when she wasn't included, and she wasn't included. And the, the let them theory is a two-folded theory. It's the let them, but then it's the let me. And what she did was she had to sit back and, and think about why it is that she wasn't invited. And the truth of the matter is she was invited because she really didn't keep in contact with those people. And while she thought they were friends, friends, like anything, you still have to nurture, you still have to work at, you still have to communicate, you still have to connect. And just because they were your friends when your kids were in school isn't enough for you to maintain that friendship. And so it wasn't that they were trying to diss her because it's never really about you. Um, though we think it's always about us, it's not really about you. It was the fact that sincerely you weren't their friend. You didn't communicate with them. You were too busy doing your own thing.

Maybe not a close friend, even, even an acquaintance.

I would, I would say that there are lots of friends that are what we would call acquaintances. You see them, you say, hi, how's it going, blah blah blah blah. But will you go out of your way? Yeah, to meet up with them or to go out to dinner with them or to call them or to text them. No. And if you're not doing that, then they're not really a friend. They're an acquaintance.

They're somebody you know. So how's this relate to Let Them? I mean, it's like, is that something that you understand when you get older?

I think you have to, have to, you don't have to understand it when you get older. I think if you read the book now, if my, if my 20-somethings and 30-somethings would start reading that book, I think they would start to realize very early on the differences that are out there, and that you are in control of how you want to be in life.

So give me another example. You gave me an example about going out somewhere.

Well, you can't control what someone else is going to be doing. You can only control how you're going to react and how you're going to step in.

And that's kind of like, okay, so maybe they're acting in a way that you don't want to, or maybe they're saying something And you just say, just let them, don't worry about it. Correct.

Let them, because they do what they want to do. Let them do what they're going to want to do, they want to do it because they want to say. It's not about— it's not necessarily a reflection on you. And I think we take things too personally and we figure that there's a reason, right? There's a reason why someone doesn't call me, there's a reason why someone doesn't text me, there's a reason why yada yada, right? There's a reason. And the reality of it all is, is that you're probably not even in their frame of mind, that it has nothing to do with you. It's just they're not really giving you any credit, but you're taking this personally like it's for you. So the flip side to that, all of it, is, is that, you know, why wait for someone to call you? Pick up the phone and call them, or text them, or say, hey, how's it going? I just want to I want to communicate, or I'm just figuring out where you're at or what, what you're up to. And I think there are lots of instances where it's you making the move, and you can't feel as though you're the person who's always making the move, and so therefore you get resentful of it. Sometimes you're just that person. You're the one who reaches out. You You're the one who communicates. You're the one who does the parties. You're the one who everybody comes to the house to eat.

So in other words, don't wait to be invited.

Don't wait to be invited. If there's somebody out there that's important to you, reach out. Say, hey, I'm gonna— I'm putting a dinner together. I was wondering if you wanted to come over and have dinner.

Okay, so dinner at our house next week?

Dinner at our house next week, because that's the crust of it all.

Okay, so that started out the weekend going on Friday night to New York City, which I think we should do more often than we have been doing. We were, what, an hour from the city? About an hour, yeah. Yeah, hour and a half depending on the traffic. Depending on traffic. We're not that far away, and it's amazing to where we live right now. And then you go there and there's like millions of people, and you're just— and you, you sometimes forget about it living where we live now. Yeah, but there is something still magical about the city, I think, when you go there and you see just the hustle and the bustle and all the different things you can do in the city and the choices of restaurants, you know, the different places you can go, the things you can do. Um, but so that was our Friday night venture. Then Saturday morning, actually on my birthday, we decided that, um, we were going to volunteer for the church. It was their community outreach day where they go out there and do it. And so we, we volunteered for a community garden. Yeah, community garden, local kind of farm in an urban setting. Like, I guess you wouldn't really call it much of a farm, but they did have a hoop house, a greenhouse, and they, they were trying to produce, they were trying to produce you know, food for the community.

Food for the community and allow the community to, to have their own raised beds and grow what they wanted to grow. That was the community garden part.

Yeah, they had, then they had the farm. Yeah, that's where we worked, the nonprofit part, area, just to really, um, I think we spent 2 hours weeding just one, just, just one bed, the blueberries.

Yeah, they were there, but there were a lot of people there, so it really helped. Many hands, as they always say, many hands makes the job. Faster and lighter. Yeah. So there were a lot of people there, and I think we got a lot accomplished.

No, I think as a, as a group we did. And yeah, and I think it, um, it felt good, you know, it felt good to have connections with others that we haven't had yet and to make a little bit of a difference in the, in the farm, in the community.

Yeah, in the community. And it got us an opportunity because we're where we, we've always explored some sense of spiritual guidance, if you will. Um, when the kids were younger, you know, we tried the Catholic Church scenario, uh, because I was raised, uh, as a Catholic. And then we tried different denominations to kind of figure out, because we both felt that spirituality was important to have a base, a good base. So we, we experimented with a few, um, different places. We tried different churches. We tried different churches. And, uh, and then after the, the, the kids were gone, um, well, no, I mean, we settled for the majority of the upbringing with the kids. We were at a Lutheran church, right? The Lutheran church, because that seemed to be the middle, the compromise between Catholic and and yeah, and everything else that you experience. Okay, that I experience. You experience. But then it was, it was, it was a good balance, I thought. But then after the kids left, we kind of just moved on to other things and didn't really explore our spirituality any longer.

That. And I mean, I think we, we were—

we still, we still believe in, and still believe in God and Jesus Christ, but it was the idea of the church being as a community, uh, and getting back into that.

We kind of moved away from that.

We moved away from that for a while. And then I would say within maybe— well, for me it's just been these, like, this year, right, where I kind of just—

2025. Yeah, it was a year I think part of that was going through, um, you know, our Growth Day experience, right?

And Brennan bringing more of the belief in the spirituality of it all, how important it is to provide, uh, or, um, not provide, but what's the word, service. And You know, giving up your time. And I, you know, when I was a kid growing up in high school, not so much in elementary school, but in high school, one of the things you had to do is you had to pick an outreach, something you were going to do. And you did it from freshman year all the way to senior year. You figured out what outreach you wanted to do, and that was part of your theology. If you will, besides being taught. Because you went to a Catholic school. Catholic school was big on doing community things. And I remember that I did— I worked with the, the children that were developmentally challenged. They could be from all walks of life, but most of them were kids that had Down syndrome. And kids that had some other developmental things. And that was my outreach. That's what I did. So you're volunteering? I volunteered, and that was part of, part of your curriculum. It wasn't like a choice. It wasn't like you didn't have to do it. You did. You had to do it. And then whether it was serving in the kitchen or doing elderly work, whatever it was, they had the, the church, the school, which was run by the diocese and the Catholic, um, had set programs, and you picked out which outreach you wanted to do, and that's what you did. So you could change it if you wanted to, or if you felt comfortable doing what you were doing, you could— you can continue to do it. But that was very much part of my upbringing growing up. I always tend to do that, which ironically enough, um, my parents weren't like that. They weren't into volunteering. That wasn't part of what they did, so they weren't really good examples of volunteerism. They kind of just left it up for the school to teach you that. It wasn't something that they introduced, but I think it's important. And probably one of the things that I— if I sit back and I look at raising our kids, it's probably the one thing we didn't do really well. We did a lot of things we didn't do really well. But I think volunteerism, yeah, was one of them. We didn't remember.

I can remember growing up volunteering. We would go visit, um, you know, people with— it was kind of like, um, what's the place in Danbury called that, that has, um, the disability— Beyond Disability, yeah.

Ability Beyond Disability, right?

Yeah. And I remember going there, we would go there after church and we would visit and just socialize with, with some of the people that couldn't get out. Yeah. You know, and that was like, and that really hit me, I think the empathy part of my life and the compassion part, because I could see people that didn't have the opportunities that I had. Yeah. That were there. I mean, when I say opportunities that I had, it was like I was, I was just a kid. But maybe they couldn't use their hands. And I remember this one guy, Jay, and he had, he had like a tablet back then of, of some type of thing where any— the way he communicated was, was like being able to push the letters to talk to him, spell something to talk to us. Yeah, with it. Um, so, so those kind of things just really hit me. I mean, I can remember it to this day. Yeah, you know, and, and And I really have, you know, passion for people that, that are disabled, but yet they've got the same motivation that we do, right? They just have some, some challenges to work with. Yeah. And sometimes we don't— we just don't accept them because they're different than us, but in reality, they just want to be part of us too.

Yeah, they're just out there. So I think now when I sit back and I look at where I'm at and how I'm, you know, kind of moving forward. I think it's the time to start giving back of your time and of your resources.

So I think that's where the volunteering started with the church on Saturday. Yeah.

Realizing we needed more of it.

Yeah, and it felt good. Yeah. And then that afternoon, She got me a birthday present. Um, can you tell? Can you tell? Let's see. How's— how do I look? How do I look? She got— she, she got me a facial.

You did your first facial, which I've never—

which I've never had before. So it was interesting.

Oh, come on. Gina did a great job. She made you look like you were 59, which is what I told you to do.

Like I was 59. So she made me look like the day before.

Okay, it was only one treatment. Let's not look for miracles. It was one treatment. No, it was, it was good.

It was an experience. It was an experience.

And then it was fun, and the day turned out even nicer than when we started, because when we started it was cold, it was raining.

Yeah. And then, then it warmed up as we were getting towards the end of the volunteer. Yeah, during morning it warmed up pretty, and then the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.

It would end up being a beautiful day.

It was a really nice day. Went to dinner overlooking the sound. Yeah. You know, seeing the sunset and the ocean made me think about wanting to get a boat again.

It doesn't help that someone else wants you to get a boat too.

Yeah, so it was kind of like, yeah, but then today we started off, um, you know, and we went to church. Yeah. And just really kind of thought more about, you know, what we should be doing, serving and giving back.

And it just has to be added to, to the list. So if I sit back and I say, okay, I'm now 60, what is 70 gonna look like? I'd probably say to you, 70, I'm— knock on wood— I'm still alive, I'm still here, but I'm healthier, I'm still active, I'm still able to do all the things I want to be able to do, which would be travel and, and see my grandchildren grandchildren and see my children. Um, come on, let's get a little more specific.

You want to be fit and you want to be active.

I want to be— well, I said I want to be fit, I want to be active. I still want to be—

I want to be active. We want to be alive and we want to have a really good friends group, which we do now, which— that was the next thing that we did, um, today was that we met with our, with our friends on— that was like a 2-hour Zoom call. Yeah. Um, which is— and where we just connect and just share what we're going— how things have been last few weeks and what we're going through, the struggles that we have, the, the accomplishments that we went through. And I think that's what's really important at this age in my life, is having that group that we can talk to and be open with and be ourselves, right? Um, and to have a good group of friends at this stage is really important. And like you you know, in the next 10 years. To me, this is like a moment where now I want to really accelerate, and I'm going to go fast, and I really want— I really want to— when I say accelerate, I want to accelerate my growth journey that I'm on now and be able to do more from my physical body, to get that into the shape that I want to, to, um, the things that I'm working on. You know, I want to— I want to— I want to be able to— when I'm 70, I want to really be able to enjoy it. And part of that enjoying is making sure that I'm both mentally in the space that I want to be in, as well as physically in the space that I want.

The thing you have to remember, even now, is that it's, it's, uh, it's about giving yourself grace to understand that it's not going to be like this. Time may go like this, but you working your way to that is, is going to take some time. It's not a open your eyes and miraculously you're the perfect weight you've ever been in your entire life, and you, you've got your health dialed in and all that great— no, it's a process.

It's a process, and you got to keep working at that process. As much as difficult as it is at times, you got to keep working at that process.

And sometimes it's a struggle because you just don't want to do it.

That's where we have to honor the struggle.

You don't know, and you don't know, and you just— even now at the age of 60, we don't know what's possible. We don't know what's possible. We don't know what's coming. But I do know— what I do know is that each day you get up, there has to be an intent. You have to have intention. You have to have desire. You have to have you know, things moving in a forward motion. If you can do that and you can manage that and you can do that every single day— what does Mel says? What, it's 3, 2, 1, or 5, 4, 3, 2, 1?

So get out of that bed when that alarm goes off. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and let's get up and go. And so, and make your bed.

It starts the next day.

Let's start your day. We should probably edit this, but we won't. Until next time, I'm Matthew Greger. I'm Nancy Greger. Bye!