(Ep. 42) LOSING 80 POUNDS AT AGE 64: How to RECLAIM Your HEALTH for an active Retirement

Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast. This is Mike Milligan, your host. We have a special guest for you today, somebody who is living life in a unique way. And that's not unexpected when you come to our podcast because we literally talk about living a one-of-a-kind life. Well, today's guest has used terms like, be all you used to be. He'll say, help me land where I wanted to be. And he's done an amazing job of connecting the past with the present to define the future He wants to live. See, Wilson Rumble, who's lived in Northern Virginia for 30 years, originally from Charleston, South Carolina, is doing something now that we all aspire to do, transitioning from working to retirement and feeling less fearful and less anxiety along the way. See, he's also a master swimmer. He spent most of his career in IT before making a transition in the last 10 years that we'll talk about in the episode. He's also a distinguished Toastmaster, and now he's got some amazing goals around travel. So sit back, pull up a chair, get your cup of coffee, because this is the Ideas by Mike podcast. Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast, where your one-of-a-kind life meets a one-of-a-kind financial plan. Every episode, we provide insights into financial markets, discuss strategies for navigating Wall Street, and explore how to make informed decisions in a constantly evolving financial landscape, all with the goal of helping you. So sit back, relax. This is not your typical money show. We're going to be all in on helping you live a one-of-a-kind life. Wilson, welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from and what stage of life are you in right now?

Sure, Mike. I'm originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and I've lived most of my adult life in Northern Virginia, working in the IT industry, most recently in sales enablement. And right now, I am currently in the trying retirement stage of my life.

Well, we're going to talk about that trying retirement phase in our podcast today. But before you got to this phase, if you could think back to before being here, there were some transformation points that's happened in your life. What was life like for you physically, mentally, or even emotionally before you made that transformation? And then describe to our audience a little bit what that transformation has been.

You know, I would say, first of all, Mike, that physically, physically, I'm an athlete. So, I was a state champion in the 2-mile in high school. And I kind of let things slide as I went through my career. And I joined a master swim team and was swimming in master swimming. But as I got really serious in my career, that kind of dwindled a little bit. And I got more focused on my career. I joined Toastmasters and was in sales and realized there was a bit of a transformation for me. Like, I'm not really doing what I love doing. This was back in 2015. And then boom, when it gelled that I could be a sales enablement facilitator, I did that. I have had the time of my life, the last 10 years of my life. I'm doing what I loved, making lots of money that set me up to be able to retire. And so I would say that was a key transformation for me. One other transformation is that coming full circle, I started answering this question, Mike, by saying I'm an athlete, right?

Mm-hmm.

Well, COVID came, gained a whole bunch of weight, Was still doing a sales facilitator, but I was looking at myself and these pictures of me teaching, and I was a big guy. I really was a big guy. And I said, this has got to change. If I'm going to move to my next phase in retirement, I want to be thinner. I want to be healthier. But most importantly, my big motivation was I want to get back to being an athlete. I want to get back to being a competitive master swimmer. So, I started this journey with a program called OPTAVIA. And in, I would say it was a space of 8 months, I lost 80 pounds. And so, here I am. I'm at, I wouldn't say I'm at my exact ideal weight because I injured my rotator cuff and I had a healing journey to do. But the plans for next year are really exciting because my shoulder's healed.

Wow.

And I can get back to swimming and then slowly get back into competitive swimming. And, and I have a goal of traveling to Valencia, Spain and competing in the Gay Games. So that's like, that's like on my big radar screen for this coming year that, that, that I'm excited about.

Most people who know me very well will, uh, know that I also had a health transformation too. I, there was a, uh, there was a time period where my kids and I were bowling. And my kids took a picture of me. When they took a picture of me, I didn't really think much about it, but they sent them after the fact, and I did not recognize the guy in the picture. And at that point in time, I weighed myself and I was 350 pounds. Over the next 19 months, I went on a journey with Orangetheory, Orangetheory Fitness and eating right. And I went from 350 down to 240. Yeah, I know that. And it was just like, there's always this moment, right, where we always realize where, man, especially athletes, because most people know my backstory. I know your story as an athlete also, but like, there's this moment that athletes realize we're not where we need to be. But we also know that when we have that realization to getting where we want to go, there's some challenges you face. How did you overcome some challenges from, uh, during that 80-pound weight loss journey?

Yeah.

And by the way, when you did that, you weren't doing that as like a 30-year-old man. You were doing that A little bit later in life. So, what were the challenges you faced?

So, I would say the first challenge is— this is going to sound funny, but setting a mindset that you really can have it all in life. And let me explain that. I think I'd mentioned earlier that I shifted a focus. I said I needed to focus more on my career because I wasn't doing what I loved doing. in my job. And I got my sales enablement job and the exercise was kind of wavering there. The challenge was realizing just being an elder Rhodes Scholar where I can do the academics of this, i.e., the working and making good money, and I can also be the athlete and I can do them both at the same time. Just shifting that mindset to say, I can have it all was really key. And I'll say that behind that too, the motivating factor is just the fact that I'm getting older and I do want to live a long time. I don't just want to live a long time, but I want to live a long time where I'm healthy physically, healthy mentally, and healthy spiritually. All 3 just being activated.

That is awesome. So, you've got some new habits and routines. Now, since that, are there any that are like non-negotiable for where you are in your life now?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've talked about a lot of different things, but this I haven't really touched on heavily. Meditation. Starting the day out, centering myself, not immediately jumping into activity, but centering myself in a position of gratitude for the day that I have this beautiful day in front of me. God, what would you have me do this day? steer me in the right direction. That sets the stage for the other habit, and that is exercise, trying to exercise at least 5 times a week. And then another habit is always be learning. In work, I always was engaged with various organizations of thought leadership and different case studies and white papers that just kept my mind spinning, kept my mind active in terms of What exactly is going out there in the workplace? And I'm speaking of the habits that I've had for the past 30 years that are in mindset, not necessarily what are my current habits. Because right now, I would say it shifted a little bit. The exercise is still there. The mental activation is going to be something different that, to be honest with you, Mike, I'm still working on that. Because I haven't determined what are the fun hobbies that are going to keep me mentally active that I want to do. The one thing that I do know that I will be doing is I will be coaching others because of this great health transformation journey that I've been on. I'd like to pay it forward. And by that, I mean coach others that are trying to do the same thing that I did, because I had a great coach. I have a great coach. That I'm still in contact with, and I would like to emulate what he has given to me and give it to others.

I love that. And we're going to talk about your impact with helping others as we kind of get to the conclusion of this. So, guys, you want to make sure to stay tuned for that. We're here with Wilson Rumble. If you remember, just a few minutes ago, we were talking about when he introduced himself, He said he's trying retirement. He's in a trial retirement phase. You know, when we first met, you were inquisitive about retirement, but what does like, not where you are right now, but when you hear the term retirement-ready mean to you beyond the financial side?

That's a great question. You know, one of the spiritual programs that I was with, I actually was on a subcommittee On retirement, and there was a debate of just changing the name to something like Life in the Golden Years, right? Because for some people, stopping what they're doing as far as work that they love really isn't an option, right? For me, it is. For me, it wasn't. I'll be honest with people because I don't. I did not want to be nailed down to a forty-hour. That's the number one thing of retirement, having freedom, freedom to work when I want to work, freedom to be a consultant. That's number one. Number 2 for retirement is a freedom to pursue hobbies and other things that stretch my mind and do other activities that I love doing that don't necessarily pay anything, right? That's the second thing. Thirdly, I'll say, I've mentioned this before, staying physically active, exercise, and also with that exercise incorporating travel because I mentioned that I like competing as a swimmer and not all the competitions are local. I can actually travel to compete in events around the country and around the world. And even aside from that, I don't need to be competing in a swim meet just to travel. My husband and I love to go on cruises. So, that's the other thing is just having that freedom to be able to travel and do long trips. As an example, in 2 weeks, we're going on a 3-week cruise to Asia, and I've never been to Asia. So, just having the opportunity to explore parts of the world that I've never been before, that's a really big— that is a big golden nugget of retirement.

Once you start down the traveling and you start exploring new places you've ever been, you start to really realize how small we really are. Because there are so many places that are just unimaginable to us because our bubble is really small, right? Like Northern Virginia, where you spent most of your career. I want to ask, now that you've explained what retirement ready meant to you beforehand, were there any parallels between getting physically healthy?

Right.

and getting financially organized to kind of head into this retirement phase you're in?

Yeah, definitely. In both cases, there is this exercise of recording. I'm going to use the word recording. Some other people will use different things like tracking my numbers, but I've established a discipline where I track my assets and I track my cash flow every month without fail. I'm doing this just to make sure that I'm staying on track and also to keep whoever I'm working with in check, so to speak, and make sure that the retirement assets, if you will, or my investment assets are actually growing to my satisfaction. And that's how it relates to athletics. I mean, in my physical, I have to track What exercises I'm doing. Like, I have a workout weight routine, but also with swimming. How many intervals am I doing? What am I swimming? Am I swimming freestyle? Am I swimming individual medley? If I'm weak on the backstroke, maybe I should go back and improve that. Just like similarly with finances, you know, every so often during the year, there will be something that goes gets a little off. Maybe I've overspent on eating out, you know, so I need to curb that back. So yeah, there are definitely a lot of parallels and they come down to the discipline of recording, you know, just making sure that you're keeping track of where you're at on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis.

So that is absolutely podcast gold, what you just said there about like recording, you know, the money that you are spending plus what you're bringing in and then holding accountable Those that you, uh, that those that you are using to make sure. Because listen, at the end of the day, we're all accountable to ourselves. The only person we can really count on to take care of the future version of you is the current version of you. And I love to hear that you said, used the word, not, not budgeting. You're not using a word, uh, you know, monitoring. You're recording. You know, the word recording just, it creates a higher level of— of discipline than what just writing something down on a sheet does or just looking at a bank statement. I absolutely love what you said there. One more question about retirement here before we go into like what your community health and impact are going to look like in retirement. But how do you define success for this next chapter of your life?

Actually being proud of accomplishments that I've made in my competition endeavors with swimming. And that's not necessarily meaning that I'm winning medals. I would love to say, you know, because in master swimming they have these various age groups and you can easily medal in your age group. But there's an expression, a couple of expressions in master swimming. The first one and the most important one that I Relate to is the only person you're competing against is yourself. You know, keep striving to improve your best time or have the best time that you possibly can for your particular age. Right? The other slogan, which is kind of funny, I like the slogan: Be all you used to be. Be all you used to be. You know, we were athletes in the past and. When we were younger, we could do a lot more and do things a lot faster. But if we can carry that young mindset into this body that's now 64 years old, but still say, I'm going to think like I'm 25, then I'm set. I'm golden. The second goal that I have is to travel, and I'll be real specific with the metrics here, to travel at least one across the Atlantic Ocean or across the Pacific Ocean journey. That is at least one trip that's in a foreign or set of foreign countries and one domestic vacation a year. And then I will say that the final one is I'd like to, and I, as I mentioned this before, this is the thing that's not crystallized, is what does my hobbies slash consulting work life look like. The only thing that I know specifically that I will be doing is, like I said, coaching people on their health journeys. But I think that there are other things. Like I saw, just as an example, in my church group yesterday, one of the guys is a tour guide at the Smithsonian Museum.

Wow.

And I'm like, whoa, where I live, Mike, we are like, in the gold mine of art and culture. So, there's the Smithsonian Museum, there's the National Geographic, and there are other places. And tour guide, I mean, that's right up my alley being a facilitator. I could see myself being a tour guide at the Smithsonian Institution.

Wow. That's absolutely amazing. And so, now you've started leading us into what you think success is going to be in retirement. Now, let's talk about your impact for retirement. You, uh, you've had this amazing health journey. You've had this journey of where you're trying retirement. You've, you've, you've shared with us that you want to participate in the Gay Games in Spain in 2026. Is that right? And that you want to continue traveling with some specific goals. So let's talk specifically about what you can offer to people as a coach.

Correct.

who is helping people take control of their health, but also helping to realize what their impact could be in retirement also?

Sure. That's an excellent question because it touches on multiple levels. You know, we keep using this word health journey, Mike, but at the outset of this, because it leads into what you were asking about, It is a mindset. It's teaching about having a healthy mindset. So this isn't just about getting in shape, losing weight, or handling weight management. It's about other health components like who are your friends in your life? What does your physical living environment look like? Are you living with somebody? Are you single? What are your sleep habits like? Just Managing each one of these things, and I'll add one other that's not really mentioned a whole lot, which you were talking about, and that is, if you're working, you know, how are you managing work with all of all of this? Because it's you know work can be stressful, and there's there are techniques that one can follow. But the key thing is to never lose sight of the North Star, no matter how hard you're working. Because this is what happened to me: I lost I lost my North Star of staying healthy. So no matter how good you are at your job, you have to do quite literally physical pushups. As you're doing mental pushups at work, you've got to do physical pushups at home. And then could quite literally be doing pushups, but I'm talking about doing the right physical activity that's good for your heart, that's good for your mind, and good for your body. I think one of the things that I believe The key thing that I brought to the table, um, in all of my career, 'cause, 'cause I've been a coach in 3 different arenas, well, 2 arenas, and there's a 3rd arena that I'm moving into. The first arena was Toastmasters and coaching people to be better speakers. And then secondly, I was coaching sales reps to be better sales reps, right? And I think that those gifts that I have learned from that, I can carry on to help people that are on their health journeys. And like I said, it's incorporating a, an inclusive mindset.

So, one final question. If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice about preparing for this stage of life, what would it be?

The big piece of advice that I would tell my younger self is make sure that you're doing what you're loving because if you're doing what you're loving, you're going to be earning more money, which means that you're going to be able to retire faster. And I will add one additional thing if you don't mind because this is really important. I think so many people, the number one thing that they're worried about with retirement is money, money, money, money. Do I have enough money? I will say that 99% of the time, people that are preparing for retirement, they do have enough money. The issue is not the money, it's the time. So, you're going to retire, you need to have a time plan, not a money plan. You need to have a time plan. How are you going to spend your time? How are you going to have positive impact? With your family, with society, and most importantly, with yourself.

Wilson Rumble, you are a star podcast guest. There is, there is so much amazing truth that came out in our 20 minutes together here today. With your permission, if anybody wanted to reach out to you, we— do we have your permission to give them your email address if they contact us?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm happy to help.

So anybody looking to hear about the transition from working to retirement, or if you're looking to make some kind of health change as you're prepping for retirement and you want a coach or a mentor or somebody to go along, boy, we have, we have just the man for you. And, uh, and Wilson, uh, as a professional coach, um, you are just now starting to explore that. That's not something you have done for 20 or 30 years. You're going to bring life experience to the table if I'm, if I'm, if I'm reading this right, correct?

Yes, absolutely.

And see, guys, that's the kind of thing we need is, uh, we don't need more professional people in this world that are just above reproach or, you know, pushing one-size-fits-all solutions. We need real people helping real people. And just like Wilson wants to create an impact and have a journey of his own that's one of a kind, he wants to help you do the same thing if you need it. So, uh, so, uh, this has been, uh, the Ideas by Mike podcast. If you want to reach out to us so that you could connect with Wilson, you could do that by going to our website at oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number one oakfinancial.com. Just, uh, just when you contact us in there, just in the comments, put Wilson. And we'll make sure to connect you and Wilson together to talk about your journey. And until next time, just want to remind everybody, be one of a kind. Thank you for joining us today on the Ideas by Mike podcast. This has been Mike Milligan, your host, where I look to bring real-world conversations with you of people changing the game. in the financial planning, investment, and retirement income space. If you want to reach out to our firm to learn more, you can go to oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number one oak financial dot com. One Oak Financial is a nationwide firm here to help you build a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life. CFP Board owns the marks CFP, Certified Financial Planner, and CFP, In the United States. As a reminder, Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner, is an investment advisor representative of Advisory Alpha LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisory firm. All opinions expressed by me or our guests are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Advisory Alpha. This recording is for informational purposes only. It should not be relied on for investment, tax, or legal decisions. And it's in no way intended to communicate or guarantee specific performance or suitability of any security instrument or product as we may have discussed. Investment advisory and financial planning services offered through Advisory Alpha LLC, a registered investment advisor. Insurance is offered through Ideas by Mike, a Virginia-based LLC here to serve you in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ideas by Mike is a separate and unaffiliated entity. Of Advisory Alpha LLC, while tax and legal issues may be discussed in the general course of financial and investment planning, Advisory Alpha does not provide tax or legal services. Please consult with your tax or legal professional prior to making decision relative to those decisions. Any and all statements of purported or observed general practices of non-affiliated firms and advisors or conditions of the broad financial services industry are solely the opinions of. Mike and are not intended to be offered as factual. The validity of these statements has not been verified, and as such, no representation of their validity are made. An annuity is a long-term financial product designed largely for asset accumulation and retirement needs. All guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Mike Milligan, LLC. Thank you again for joining us today. We'll see you on the next podcast. In your one of a kind mind. Be one of a kind, take the flight. Mike's the guide, you'll shine bright.