An Ex-DEA Agent On Lifestyle Design

Welcome to the 12th podcast for new retirement. Today, we're going to be talking with Bruce Goldberg, a recently retired federal dea, Drug Enforcement Administration agent, about his career arc life overseas, how and why he chose to retire at 52, and what's next. Our podcast guests so far have been subject matter experts on topics like behavioral finance, investing, work and retirement, personal finance, Social Security, retirement income, fire and purpose. But we wanted to learn from some kind of more regular people who are transitioning into retirement or engaged in lifestyle design. So, Bruce, welcome to our show. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Yeah, I appreciate you making the time. So I kind of wanted to start just learning a little bit more about your background. You know, you had a. You've had a pretty interesting kind of and different career, you know, relative to most people, you know. What led you to get into the dea?

Well, I'd always wanted to be a police officer ever since I was a little kid. I mean, it's either the police officer or the garbage truck driver, right? So eventually you realize that the garbage truck smells and you'd rather be a police officer. So all my growing up years, I'd been kind of gearing towards being fascinated with police and what police do and the community service and the purpose of it. When I was in college, my older brother, who was a chemist by trade, took an internship with the dea. And through him, I had met some of the agents and I got to visit my brother, and that was the first I had learned about the dea. And I said, wow, this seems like a really cool job. So while my last semester of college, I applied with the DEA as well as other law enforcement agencies because I was graduating and law looking for a job like all young people. And as I made my way through the hiring process for all the different jobs, DEA was actually the first ones to call and offer me a position.

That's interesting. What did you study in college?

Criminal Justice Administration.

Okay, so you had the background, and what kind of people did you see joining the dea? Was it a lot of military or is it all kinds of folks?

Now? We see a lot of. Of military and prior local law enforcement. The requirements now require two years of some type of professional investigative experience. So we're seeing a lot of military, a lot of local law enforcement. Not so much people right out of college anymore, huh?

Interesting. All right, I'm gonna ask you kind of a random question. I just watched Sicario. Is that. Is that at all realistic? Are those kinds of movies at all realistic, or is that just totally made up?

No, it's not. With the 24 hour news cycle and, and social media and everybody having a camera on their phones, the type of things you see in some of these movies, if that was really going on, you'd hear about these military convoys crossing the border and chasing bad guys and doing all these Secret Squirrel things. While those types of COVID activities do exist, a lot of times they're not that action packed.

Got it, got it. So when you first joined the dea, what was kind of the first thing you were doing there?

Well, as I joined the DEA, I was 23 years old. So I was much younger than the average age of those who were coming on the job, which was about 29 years old. So as, as a young, young guy, there was a lot of things I needed to do, maturity wise, to learn how to be professional and conduct myself in stress situations and things that really affected the outcomes of people's lives. I mean, putting somebody in jail and denying them of their freedoms is a very significant authority and you have to take it seriously. So early in my career, a lot of the work I did was really supporting the investigations of the more senior, senior agents in the office. But there were a couple of opportunities to me to work for me, to work undercover because of my young age. Right. I blended in better with some of the young criminal element because of the way I looked in my age.

Got it. And can you share a little bit about like some of the. Did you have any kind of peak experiences around doing that? I think when we talked earlier, you mentioned you were doing some work in San Diego and some of the stuff that was going on down there.

My first assignment was in San Diego, California. That's where I hired on. And at the time, the agency did not have the money to transfer all these incoming agents to new assignments. So instead of paying to move them all over the country, they just sent us back to where we hired from. Which for me was great because San Diego is beautiful and I had family there and. But my first undercover activity, about three, four months on the job, I was going to buy LSD on Pacific beach, like right across the street from. From where the roller coaster is that, that historic roller coaster? It was a Jack in the Box restaurant at the time. Now I passed it month ago. Now it's a Starbucks. Go figure. But so I, I was introduced through a confidential source who had been arrested and wanted to cooperate with law enforcement. And at the end of the day, everybody cooperates with law enforcement. They all do. Regardless of the songs and what they tell you. Nobody wants to go to jail for their full exposure. They're willing to cooperate. So this, this young young man who was arrested took me along and introduced me to who he bought LSD from. And I negotiated with them for a large purchase of lsd, which at the time was a large purchase, it was about $1,500 worth of LSD tabs on blotter paper. And I was wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top and flip flops. And I met them at the Jack in the Box and we negotiated. And a week later I brought the money and they brought the drugs. And when it was time to arrest them, all hell broke loose. It was, it's a great story. The, my, my cover team, the agents who were covering me and were going to come in when I gave the prearranged signal to arrest was, was much older than I, and the guys I were negotiating with were my age, you know, young 20s. And so when I gave the signal to arrest and they started to come in and make the arrest, the young guys I was negotiating with, there were four of them. Eventually saw, saw the police coming and ran away on foot. And the foot chase was on, so I didn't want to, you know, stay out of the action. So I went to my car real quick, grabbed my gun and got, gave chase to the nearest guy I could and I caught him and we had a, we had a little bit of a fight in the alley. And as, as all this was going on, the local police were notified about a drug bust in progress and suspects on foot and fleeing, fleeing arrest. And while I'm fighting with this guy in the alleyway and I was getting the upper hand and I'm standing over him now and my gun pointed at him. I, I don't have any handcuffs on me. A police car pulls into the alleyway and the two police officers see just me, right? Nothing knowing that I'm a police officer standing over this guy with a gun in my hands and they get out of the car and they start pointing guns at me, right? So it was very interesting, but not the first time that I've had local police point guns at me though. So that's part of the learning process.

Of do they, do they train you on how to deal with that situation if you're undercover, like how to negotiate with another police force?

You know, in that instance, when you, when you have armed police officers pointing their weapons at you and it's a high stress situation, the only thing to do is really just do what they tell you to do, right? Just I put down my weapon a far enough distance from. From the bad guy that I was standing over and complied to their commands until they were able to. To fully understand that I was the good guy. So. Makes for a great story, but at the time, it scared the hell out of me. Right, sure.

Yeah. In the moment, you've got to be like, I'm actually in law enforcement, too. Don't shoot me.

Don't shoot me.

But I wonder if, you know, if the bad guys put that out. Yeah, I mean, they talk about, you know, people in military and law enforcement that, you know, there's a lot more stress that those folks go under and actually results in lower life expectancy. You know. Do you guys talk about that inside of your.

We do. You know, I couldn't give you the exact figures, but the, the rates of divorce among people in law enforcement are higher than the average. The rates of suicide are higher than average. It's. It's something that, that a lot of us keep in the back of our minds. You know, when you're young and you want to be involved in law enforcement, those types of things and thinking about retirement are nowhere near in your frame of mind. You're just excited to have the job, and as you get on in years, then those things start to come into play.

Right. Yeah. No, it's interesting. I mean, I was going to share one quick story that kind of made it real for me because I think for a lot of folks that aren't, that are not ex military or law enforcement that haven't dealt with this, don't realize kind of the kinds of stresses that you not don't regularly necessarily run into, but, but, you know, can come up. So my. My wife's cousin is. Is in the sheriff's department in San Diego, and we were at Thanksgiving once, and he was telling me the story where he's like, he's a younger guy. He was on like, motorcycle duty and a call came in about a robbery, an armed robbery in a house. And the guy was on foot and it was three miles away. And so they're just keep their eyes open. He didn't expect to see this guy, but then he saw someone that looked like him going down the street. So he spun around and. And followed this guy. And the guy took off and ran, you know, through some backyards. He had to jump off his motorcycle. So he's trying to call for backup, but they're not close. He runs him down, tackles the guy, and they're fighting. So he's gone from kind of like normal everyday life to now he's like, you know, in a fight for his life with this guy in the backyard. And, you know, he relayed that basically it was clear that he was gonna have to use additional force to stop the guy. So he pulls out his gun and now they're fighting over his gun. I don't know if I don't. Somehow the gun got introduced and now they're fighting over the gun. And so he was like, okay, I'm gonna have to shoot this person. He's right next to him, right? They're like wrestling. And he put the gun into the guy and pulls the trigger. But because of the way the gun was designed, it actually won't fire if the end of the gun is pressed in for some reason for this gun. So it didn't fire. And then the fight continued. And his backup showed up when they arrested the guy. And now he's, in retrospect, he's much happier that, like, hey, I didn't shoot somebody at point blank range and kill him right in front of me, you know, but that's something you need to deal with. And you're like, you hear that story, you're like, that's, that's crazy.

Something all of us think about, right? I mean, that's a tough thing to live with when you take another person's life. It's something, you know, that, that we all dread that day. I've been in that situation a few times, and thankfully, thankfully, I've never actually had to shoot somebody. I've come really close and I've been in situations where shots have been fired. It's a real wake up call. I mean, when you finish and the adrenaline has now left your body and you're past that moment in time, you really have to come to terms with it. You like to think you're invincible and you know that kind of thing isn't going to happen to me. But it does. Yeah, it does.

Do they train you in how to prepare for that situation at all or is it.

In a way, yes. I mean, they, they give you scenarios. We were fortunate enough to have time with other agents who had been in those situations, either who had been shot or have had to shoot somebody. But until you're actually in it, until you actually experienced it yourself, I don't know how well you can really be prepared for it. Now, thankfully, the government, you know, DEA and other agencies offer. In my agency, it's called the Employee Assistance Program or the eap. And so they make available to you mental health services and things like that for when you have those situations. One of the shootings that I was in, it's a mandatory part of the post shooting protocol that you visit with a clinician to talk through what had happened. It's confidential. And if the clinician feels that, that you need follow up to deal with whatever trauma you have experienced, then you'll have that right. It's not a cost to the employee or the agent. It's just having that mental health support when you need it. Not have to worry about either the stigma of going because it's confidential or the ability to pay for it because it's provided. So I think that's great.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, this is what is so different about your experience versus most people. So I want to talk more about kind of like how your career unfolded and I know you did some work overseas and stuff like that before I move on. Any other kind of, I think highlights from the beginning of your career? I mean, not that I want to dive too much into the kind of Bourne Identity stuff here, but it's interesting to hear this.

Like any organization, it gets bureaucratic at some point. When you're, when you're young and you just started with dea, you're assigned to a group, a squad, a team, however you want to refer to it. And there's usually eight to 10 of you and a supervisor. And you're really, your whole world focuses on that group and the investigations that group is doing. So all the politics and the bureaucracy of the agency are not involved. And it's, and it's, it's a wonderful time in your career. You can be kind of naive to all the politics and bureaucracy that goes on. But Those, those first 10 years on the job were probably the best for me because it was just pure crime fighting and being out of the street every day and supporting your teammates and, and putting bad guys in jail and all the things you signed up to do.

And I know you were, you're an athlete in, in high school and also in college too.

I did, I went to a Division 1 school. I did not play football in college. I did post college. I played two years of football in a law enforcement charity league. We played other police and fire departments around the United States for charity. But it was, you know, full contact college rules football.

And I think you mentioned before, like some of your tackling experience came in handy and a couple of things. You're like the designated runner or something like that.

Exactly, yeah. Being the young guy and being in good shape and you Know, I like to do a lot of sports and keep my physical fitness up. So working in groups with older guys, when we would do these, what we call by bus situations where we would culminate a case with a bad guy bringing us drugs or chemicals or whatever it may be, and we're actually going to arrest them that day. Most guys are dressed in heavy tactical vest, boots. They've got a lot of equipment on their belt, handcuffs and batons and your gun and extra magazines and the radio. They would pick one or two guys to be in a lightweight vest, running shoes, and very, very limited equipment on their belts because if the guys ran away on foot, somebody had to go chase them. So I was that guy for a number of years.

Nice. Well, I'm glad you got to put your athletic stuff to good use. So after that, I know that you did some work in training in the San Francisco field division and then in Washington and then you worked overseas. Can you kind of give us a quick overview of kind of like just how your career unfolded? And I'll talk to you a little bit more about. I'm especially interested in some of the stuff you did overseas and just what that experience was like.

So I started my career in San Diego. I spent my first eight and a half years in San Diego and in San Diego county in the late 80s and early 90s. A lot of what we dealt with were, were methamphetamine type cases and methamphetamine labs, very toxic, very dangerous, requiring a whole another skill set of how to wear personal protective equipment, air respirators, and know the hazards of some of these chemicals you're dealing with. So a lot of my investigations early on were these meth lab type cases. And I developed an expertise in processing these labs and making sure that we were safe in doing it. A lot of police are taught how to, how to shoot and how to write reports and how to interview people. But when it comes to these types of investigations with labs, you know, knowing the boiling point of a certain chemical or the off gas point is all unknown.

Right, because you read about these houses blowing up.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And it contaminates, contaminates the waterways, it contaminates the land. It's really bad. So I spent a lot of time working in these meth labs and after eight and a half years, I had pursued a position was, was asked to actually apply for a position at our Office of Training to help teach the basic clan lab course that we taught to other agents, local police, even police in other countries. So I Accepted that position. I spent two years at our Office of Training in Quantico, Virginia. It's on the Quantico Marine Base, right next to the FBI Academy. And I helped teach that clan lab course. I did that for about two years and got the itch to want to go back to enforcement and I applied for a position in San Francisco as a supervisor. I got accepted that position. I came to San Francisco for the first time in 2000. I spent a year running the San Francisco Airport Task Force, working with San Francisco Police, San Mateo County Sheriff's Department and had a great time.

Are there a lot of drugs going through sfo?

Tremendous, really tremendous amounts of drugs now. And I would say ever since 9, 11, not so much body carriers of drugs because of all the enhanced security measures. But we do see a lot of money coming back into San Francisco. This is money that's coming back. Profits being returned to California for the sale of high grade California marijuana that is being distributed in other parts of the United States, which is illegal under California law as well. And so we're seizing millions and millions of dollars every year of money coming back into California.

People are just bringing this cash in and their luggage and stuff like that.

20,000, 100,000, $200,000 of cash in their carry on bag or their checked luggage. It's unbelievable.

How do you ID these folks? Is there something.

There's a process. There's a process. A lot of times just by seeing people purchase a ticket at the last minute, paying in cash, potentially having a quick turnaround, having almost no checked in bags and they're, they're coming to San Francisco, right? You think you're coming for vacation, you're, you're going to stay a while, you're doing this, you're that. When you talk to some of these people, they don't have a hotel reservation, they can't identify the person who's coming to pick them up. A lot of these unknowns which indicate that they're probably up to no good.

And are these folks coming in from over? They're coming in domestically, but also they're coming in domestically. Domestically. Okay.

So the, the marijuana is leaving, leaving California and in parcels and trucks and car trunks and you name it and then the money's being flown back in. So after, after a year doing that, I moved up to the city and I spent two years supervising the San Francisco's metropolitan task force, again with other law enforcement agencies, working together for a common goal. And we spent a lot of our time working on large scale Mexican drug Traffickers bringing heroin into the United States. And then after three years here in San Francisco, I had to do my headquarters rotation, go back to Virginia, which all first line supervisors have to do. I spent two years working in our Office of Inspections, which means we were doing administrative inspections of all our offices around the world and doing the non criminal shooting investigations. So shooting investigations from a policy standpoint, if there was any negligence or involved, that would be referred to our internal affairs section or what we call our Office of Professional Responsibility. While I was there in the Office of Inspections, I applied for my first overseas position that I got accepted to and actually applied to a lot of positions. It's difficult. We have little less than 5,000 agents and only 400 of them are located outside the United States. So some of these countries are. It's pretty cool to get selected to work overseas. I got selected to be the country attache for our office in Quito, Ecuador. Nice. Ecuador is a beautiful country. I've had some amazing experiences there, met some wonderful people, did some amazing investigations. Ecuador's only downfall is geography. It's located right between cocaine, Colombia and Peru, the two world's largest producers of cocaine in the world. So, you know, geography makes it very difficult for the, for the Ecuadorian government to deal with all this cocaine that is moving over land into their country and then leaving via aircraft. Containerized cargo, fishing vessels, semi submersible submarines.

Are the. Wow. Are the governments cooperating generally? Because you kind of hear mixed messages. Oh, sometimes maybe, you know, so while, while a country.

In my last five years in Ecuador, I was there six years and eight months, my last five years, the government was being run by a leftist president, Rafael Correa. And while Rafael Correa did not agree with the policies of the United States government, we had a common battle, we had a common cause in drug trafficking. And to the extent possible, I had great working relationships with my Ecuadorian national police counterparts, the Ecuadorian military and members of the government. I mean, they didn't like the drug problems that were occurring in their country any more than we did. And so from a law enforcement standpoint, we found common ground whether their government disagreed with some of the policies of ours. We worked very well together.

Right. It's such a big market and there's so much money flowing through it. Yours, you know, any. I would think that a lot of people in any, you know, us or internationally could be subject to being influenced by that money. Did you, did you see that?

A lot of corruption. No doubt there's a lot of corruption and you know, some of the things that we as DE agents do to get hired, a background investigation, a polygraph examination, we also, in this country deal with the concerns of corruption. So while I would say, you know, in Ecuador and Peru and Colombia and places that I've been, there are. There's, there's corruption, I think on a, on a, on a grander scale than what we see in the United States. But we're not immune to it either, by any stretch of the means. So after. After Ecuador. But I, I came back to San Francisco. I came back to San Francisco. I became the Assistant Special Agent in charge in July 2012. I stayed here for three and a half years, and I managed a number of different operations or offices. Our office in San Jose, our office in Oakland, some of our administrative functions, our intelligence functions. I wasn't in an enforcement role anymore. So now I'm in the, the politics of management. Yeah, I'm in management. And, and I did that for three and a half years and then had an opportunity to apply for a position in Peru. And I had a wonderful experience in Ecuador. I was looking forward to the opportunity to go back down overseas and went to Peru in January 2016. And about a year and a half into it, I decided that I had. I had peaked my fund meter. I had 28 years or five weeks short of 28 years of service. And. And it was time, right? And. And thankfully, my wife and I had. Had kept our house that we owned here in beautiful Mill Valley, and it was, it was just time to come home.

Huh. So had you planned that out in advance or you kind of reached a point in your career and you looked around and said, I thought I would.

Be in Peru three years. I thought I would do a full tour. About six to nine months into it, I realized that, that I was. I was ready. Ready to move on. I. I had been there about four months, and I was the acting regional director. There wasn't a regional director in. In place. The. The regional director who selected me when, before I went down, had gotten a promotion and went to D.C. so when I arrived, I was the boss temporarily. And when the new boss was selected and showed up, it was obvious that, that he wanted his own. His own person. And to a certain extent, I think he felt very insecure that here was somebody who had been managing the office for four months, had gained the trust of a number of the employees, and was a little insecure with the fact that I probably knew more than he did. And so it was not a good relationship from the beginning. And I knew it was, it was time. So at about six to nine months into it, my wife and I really started to discuss and go over the numbers to see if it was possible that I could retire at age 51. I'm 52 now, but this was 10 months ago.

So that's. Yeah, it seems so young.

It is young. I mean, no doubt.

Right. And I guess you, you came to that conclusion. I mean, it, it's interesting hearing that. So I hear this from, you know, more and more of my friends where the same thing happens in the private sector. You know, you, you're, you're in one situation and then someone else comes in and they typically want a clean house and have their own team.

And, you know, and I can understand that to a certain respect. I mean, I was there to do a job. I was there to support the mission, and I could do that for anybody, Right. If I, if I thought that that person had the integrity and the wherewithal to, to allow me to do my job. Things may have been different, but, but that's okay. I had promoted to that level. I had gone into that world on other occasions. The politics and the bureaucracy about who, you know, have, have favored me. Right. So I get it right now. The benefit is I had had almost 28 years of service. For me as a federal law enforcement officer, I could retire after 20 years of service if I was at least 50 years of age or 25 years of service. And any age. Now I reached 25 years of service when I was 48 because I had started so young. So I had that option, right? I had that option.

Yeah. That's an amazing option to have. I think it's interesting though that for, you know, for a lot of folks, I mean, in general, people believe that they're going to work until their 60s, but the average retirement age is, you know, around 57. So for whatever reason, kind of across the board, public or private, people end up leaving their traditional careers earlier, many years earlier than they had originally planned.

Right. And I've retired from my career and I like to say the word that I've retired. I haven't stopped working, but I've retired from my career job. So the things that I do now part time or on a volunteer basis are things that keep me engaged, keep me on some type of a plan, some type of a schedule. You gotta have that, right? I know we're gonna get into that and talk about it, but at 52 years of age, you know, I am young, right? So it's not the Time just to stop doing everything. And you think of, I'm going to retire. And it's like, okay, the first thing I do when I get back to the United States is order that La Z Boy chair. Well, no, that, that, that's not in the house. Right. That, that, that's not the plan.

Yeah. So you reached this point where you were financially independent. Basically, you could do what you want to do. I mean, do you need to work at all or No?

I do. I mean, if I lived in other parts of the country, probably not. I mean, but we live in a very expensive town. Right. Mill Valley, California, is one of the most expensive places in the United States to live, whether it's real estate, price of gas, you name it. I'm a believer of you get what you pay for. And we have, you know, it's a beautiful day out today. There's almost no humidity. We don't have a lot of bugs. The beach I could walk to. I could be in the mountains in less than three hours. Gorgeous cities. Gorgeous restaurants in the city 10 minutes away and a large international airport close by. I mean, we have everything we need here.

You could go into real estate.

Yeah. So do I need to continue to work? Yes. Do I have to work full time? No. So. So, you know, I want to make it work. We love it here. I still have two kids in school here. I think it's a great place to grow up. And we've definitely become part of the community, either through the school and meeting people who have kids of similar age, or just some of the things I've done in the county or in the city to support my community. You know, my kids spent some of their earlier days here. They played baseball and soccer and football and so you become part of this community, right?

Yeah, I think community is super important and kind of as people think about what they're going to do next and what their life is going to be like, choosing a place or being thoughtful about where they're going to live, if it's overseas or if it's domestically and what kind of town. I think we're seeing a lot more people.

Right. Because I could be financially independent if I move to a less expensive state, but it's starting over all over again. In your community, who, you know, who you socialize with, what you're going to do.

So mechanically, what you have going in your favor is you've got this, this long career, I'm assuming a pension.

Yes.

Did you start your pension or not? You can.

I have. It's automatic when you retire. When I retire. Now, our retirement system is broken up into three parts. So there's a. There's a traditional pension, which is a percentage of your salary based on Your last, highest 3, 3 years or highest 36 continuous months of salary and the number of years in service. Mine worked out to be 41% of my base salary. That's my traditional pension.

Okay. And does that adjust for inflation over time?

It does.

Nice.

It does.

Okay.

Secondly, we have what's called the Thrift Savings Plan, which is basically the government's version of a 401k. I'd been contributing into it since I was on the job at the one year mark. Back then, you had to wait a year and then you could start contributing to it. And the government matches a certain percentage up to 5%, and there's a cap just like a 401k of how much you can contribute each year. So I was contributing the maximum amount each year, and I think the year I retired, the maximum contribution was $18,500. So automatically, through my years of service, I was contributing at least 10% to my retirement, if not a little more.

Good job. Because the recommendation is to save 10 to 15% of your salary.

Exactly.

And plus, you have the pension on top of that. And how can, can you. What kind of choices do you have for investing that? Is it like a typical set of mutual funds or funds.

They are a set of mutual funds, and there are five or six different funds you can invest in. There's a. Just a regular government. There's. There's two funds that are secure with very remote chances of losing your principal. And then there are stock funds that have a much higher risk. Right. But obviously, you know, over time, the, the riskier funds can earn a higher percentage.

And what was that? You mentioned that. So there's the pension, there's the tsp, and what was the third leg?

Social Security, Social Security, age eligible.

Okay, so you can get Social Security too.

Right.

Because I know that some federal.

If it's still there. Yes. When I turn 70. If it's still there.

We just put up a podcast with Mary Beth Franklin about this. And also, I'm sure you've seen the news that it's due to Social Security will only be able to pay about 75% of the benefit in 2034. So it's, it's. And Medicare is in worse, worse shape.

And I've always, you know, realistically speaking, I've always thought of my contributions to Social Security as, as a way to support my Parents, I have not been fully secure in thinking that it's going to be there for me when I turn 67 or 70.

Yeah. I mean, personally, I think it'll be there in some form or fashion, but they're going to have to make adjustments, like move out the claiming dates. Today you can claim it's 62 or your full retirement age, which is 66 or 67, it moves up as, as you. As time goes by, or 70 is the max. But I think they'll raise the 70. They'll probably raise the full, you know, retirement age, and maybe they'll raise the lower limit, too.

And if they phase that in, like, if they said for people who are under age 50, it's going to be 63, and if it's. You're under 40, it's going to be 65. If they phased it in, I think that would be a really good approach. But it's such a political football to say that you're going to change Social Security that nobody wants. Nobody wants to be that guy.

Yeah, but they actually did it. So it's interesting. The reason it's moving right now from 60, the full retirement age from 65 to 66 to 67 is that I think it was 1983. They said, okay, you know, in 30 years from now, we're going to make those changes. And that's, that's kind of how you have to do it. You have to look way forward, you know, 10, 20, 30 years and say, this is how it's going to. Gonna go. But yeah, I think it'll be there. But, you know, I know that a lot of people, especially also millennials, they, they highly discount it. And so. Interesting. And any, Any other kind of. Since we're talking about kind of the financial side, I was curious what you're doing for healthcare because. So you're young, right? You don't get.

I am young. No, as. As part of my. One of my benefits of working for the federal government, I get to keep my health insurance. If I had it for the last five years of my employment, I can keep my health insurance at the rate of payment, at the cost of what I was paying when I was employed with dea, which is amazing. That's an amazing benefit.

What does healthcare cost when you work with the da?

Well, with, with a family. So I have, I have three children that are still under 26. In my plan, I think I am paying personally about $650 a month.

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, that's a huge benefit. I think one of the big things that a lot of people underestimate is that. So if you're. If you work for the federal government and you work for the public sector in general, generally pay levels are lower.

But.

But the pension and healthcare benefits are so big that net. Net the aggregate total compensation over your lifetime is in many cases, higher than you're gonna make in the private sector.

I would hope I live that long. Really. I would hope I live. There's a gentleman who lives here in Mill Valley. He's the oldest living DEA agent. He retired in 1973. He's 91 years old. God bless him. He still lives by himself. He still drives. I try to see him every once in a while and take him out for lunch and. Just a wonderful guy to talk to. And he has been retired longer than he was an active agent. And so his benefits. He has. His retirement, I think each year is more than what he ever made in a yearly salary.

Right. Because it adjusts for inflation. Wow. And how'd you get connected with them? Just because there's a network of.

There's a network, an organization of retired agents, and they do some philanthropy work. They spend time recognizing current agents for some of their outstanding work. And they offer, you know, college scholarships and do some other charity golf tournaments to support families of fallen agents, things like that. And so I met him, I think, my first year here in San Francisco in 2012, realized that we're basically neighbors, live two miles away as the crow flies, and that he's on his own and by himself. I think it's nice to pay him a visit every once in a while and share a glass of wine. He loves his wine, and he's just a wonderful guy. He can tell you stories about. In World War II at his age, he was drafted in. In the last years of the war and reported to angel island, was put on a ship, and spent a year as part of the US Occupying force in Japan. So the war was over by the time he got finished his basic training stuff, but he spent a year, got on a ship right in angel island, sailed under the. Under the bridge, and that's what he did. And he's just an amazing man. And. And it's been wonderful to know him. So, you know, we can all aspire to live as long as Bob has and have such a good life.

Well, it's great that you're engaging with him, finding him, and I think a lot of people there. There is so much knowledge and great experience in older folks that is largely untapped. You know, and you know, this sounds like Bob has some amazing stories I was reading. You know, there's a New York Times article about trying to put senior communities near child care. Right. Or put them in the same building so that older folks can engage with the young kids. And there's some positive synergies there versus I think in our society today. In many cases, older people are kind of warehoused. You know, you hit a certain point, okay, you're less useful, you know, into the old folks home and then, you know, you're, you're irrelevant. And you know, and it's very disengaging for the folks and actually super unhealthy for them too because they're, they're isolated there. So it's cool that you're engaging him and learning from him. All right, so before we move on from the financial stuff, any. Are you with your tsp? Do you manage it yourself or do you, did you roll it in? Can you roll it into like a rollover or something like that?

So I can leave it under the government's TSP plan for as long as I want to. The fees are very small and I can leave it there untouched until I'm 70 years old and then have to do some type of withdrawal. Just like your 401ks, the fund seems to be managed very well and there's no reason not to move it at this point. Now the current administration is making some changes to the TSP that will make it more user friendly for retirees to not have to be locked into either an annuity or only so many withdrawals a year. And they're going to make that more flexible, which I think is great because people sometimes have unexpected expenses, whether they're medical expenses or they want to take that trip of a lifetime while they're still able to. So the fund is going to become more flexible, which I think is, is good.

Got it. So just to recap, then, it's not you're getting your pension, you're keeping your money in your tsp. You've got health care at a relatively low cost, you're working part time. In the future, you'll claim Social Security. How are you going to claim Social Security? Have you thought about that? Like, at what age?

I will try to push it off as late as possible. As I understand it, if you wait until, you know, 70 years old, your monthly benefit will be higher than if you took it earlier. So if I don't need to use it before 70, I don't intend to.

Yeah, basically the rule of thumb Is if you're married, the highest earning spouse should delay as long as possible, ideally till 70. And the reason is, is that a surviving spouse will get a higher benefit. So it's really not, it's better to think about it like, okay, will this make a huge lifestyle difference for if, you know, you passed away first for my wife in her last 10 years of life at 90 years old. And the answer is in many cases, yes. So that's why, you know, it's a good way to think about it that way. Okay. So that it's. I appreciate all the insight about and openness about kind of how you're, how you're doing your retirement, financial stuff, you know, moving on to kind of like what your life is like these days and how, you know, how you look at it. So you've gone from 28 years, one career, I mean pretty, pretty, pretty interesting career arc. Now you're relatively financially independent and you can do whatever you want. How do you choose what to do?

Well, there's been a lot of things to choose from. I will tell you. Before I got hired with dea, I mean it was the only real job I ever had. I made pizzas in college, worked at a kosher style deli. That was really about it. So from a professional standpoint, that was it. When I decided I was going to retire, just putting together a resume and learning how to network and do all those things that you really need to do were all new to a guy 51 years old, I was able to navigate that fairly well. I got some help making a resume from a professional, a service that I paid for, which I think definitely paid for itself. And when I came came back, there were a lot of different opportunities. Some things I really wanted to do that I still hope may come to fruition. I enjoyed teaching when I, when I was working at our academy and I taught police officers from all around the world and traveled to a number of countries to do it. I thought that was great and I'd really like to do that again. That hasn't come to fruition, but I wanted to stay engaged with, with my expertise, things I had done. One of the first things I started to do when I came back that I loved doing part time when I was employed was, was coaching. And I have two boys at Tam High School on the football team and I had asked if they needed any more assistant coaches and, and they welcomed me with open arms. I used to help coach with Pop Warner, the Southern Marin Broncos here in town when my boys played. And so the day I got off the airplane my first day of being a retired guy. I was on the football field and between helping with the high school and helping with the Southern Marin Broncos Pop Warner, I was working seven days a week coaching football. It was Monday through Friday of practice. The high schools had games on Saturday and the Pop Warner kids had games on Sundays. And I'm like, wow. And I realized that you need to do something, you need to have a plan to stay engaged, to find a purpose, to want to be active. Right. And, and so football was that way for me to get started with a, with a schedule. I had to be somewhere at a certain time each day. You know, I had a plan, right. And after doing that for four months, I, I, I, I had been networking in, in some other fields. I, I took on some consulting work doing due diligence audits of pharma pharmacies, which, which was kind of in my, my stream of consciousness and my experience with my familiarity with toxicologies of medications and, and, and prescription medications that, that are causing huge issue in the United States right now. So I was doing that as, as a consultant and learning how to be a, in business for myself as a sole proprietor and very flexible. And I realized that I really liked the flexibility. And then one day I'm dropping my son off at the Mill Valley Community center and I had done some community work for them. The Mill Valley Aware Drug and Alcohol Task Force is run by the recreation department. And so I'm dropping my older son off at the rec center and there's a big sign on the marquee about part time jobs, flexible hours and free gym membership. And I'm like, that's me, right? That's great. And so I had emailed the director who I had known for a number of years and I said, hey, what do you got? And I looked on the website and I found a position as a field monitor which basically makes sure that the fields, when they're not supposed to be in use, they're not being torn up by, by some guy out there with his golf clubs or they, they rent out certain spaces in Old Mill park and other areas and you want to make sure they're clean and good to go and people are using them appropriately during baseball season. You want to make sure the parents aren't setting up the full bar in the stands while they watch their seven year old play T ball. So things like that, I'm like, I can do that. And so, and of course the free gym membership is great. So I started working for the Recreation Department. And it's part time and, you know, eight, 10, 15 hours a week. Very flexible. My commute is all of 2 1/2 miles. And they're a great group of people to work with. Most of them are much younger than I, but they serve a great need in the community. They do such fantastic things with swim lessons and programs for the elderly. And I. I really like that sense of being a part of my community.

That's interesting. So you, it sounds like you retired. You didn't have a complete perfect plan about exactly what you're going to do, but you kind of knew you were going to do something engaging. You found, you know, you did football coaching. You're doing the stuff in the community with the fields. You seem happier. Are you pretty happy doing that?

I am. I still do. When I was here as the assistant special agent choice charge, I was doing some public speaking at schools, community groups. And now that I'm retired, I've kind of been asked to continue to be a part of that. The county of Marin has their RX Safe Marin program, which is trying to lower the misuse and abuse of prescription medications. I was there with them when it started in 2014. I'm still a part of it. The Marin County Office of Education holds a school law enforcement partnership meeting five times during the school year where they bring together vice principals, the principals from the different high schools and middle schools, as well as the school resource officers that cover those schools together. And they talk about issues of concern. When I was still with dea, I did a couple of presentations with them on different types of drugs for their, for their knowledge and awareness. I was asked to continue to attend those meetings, which I enjoy doing. I still. Since my retirement, I've done presentations for Redwood High School's ptsa. I've done a couple of presentations at Drake High School. I've done some at tam, whether it's their Spanish class or their. Or their street law classes. So I love, love still doing that. Like tonight I'm actually giving a presentation at the Elks Lodge in San Rafael. So I don't charge for that. I don't want to charge for that. I just like doing it if I can, if I can educate some parents about the realities of what's out there that their kids may be exposed to. Because a lot of times I'll do these presentations and the parents, their first response is, I had no idea that was a thing.

Right.

I had no idea that was available.

You know, as a parent yourself, does it scare you?

Scares the hell out of Me.

What do you find the most scary?

There's so much misinformation out there. The kids are learning about drugs from other kids or from the Internet. Not everything you read on the Internet is correct. And so I don't think they fully understand how bad some of these things are. And with, you know, the legalization of marijuana and, you know, that's a whole separate discussion, but with respect to young adults and teens whose. Whose brain development can be affected by any number of these substances, which will never. They can't get back, change back. Right. It scares the hell out of me. Now, my kids seeing me come home from work sometimes kind of bloodied and beat up and having to take all my protective equipment off in the garage and throw it right in the washing machine or whatever. I think they fully grasp it. I think they fully get it, but there's still a lot of pressure. And you go to parties or you're with kids and, you know, I hear it from my kids about the things that they've seen or heard that go on in the schools, whether it's the middle schools or the high schools, whether it's the vaping or, you know, drugs or kids showing up to school drunk, and it's. It's terrible. And, you know, you hear parents, we get together with other parents and we have these discussions about where your kids are going to go to high school next year. And. And parents will say, I'm. I'm not going to send my kid to this school because they have a drug and alcohol problem. And I shake my head and I go everywhere. Every school has drug and alcohol problem.

Yeah.

If you're deciding where to send your child to high school in Marin county based on who has less of a drug or alcohol problem, you're killing yourself. Because they all have it. They all have it.

Yeah. I mean, I tell my kids that I heard this somewhere. I think it's. I don't know if it's true, but that if you try heroin once, you have a 25 chance of getting hooked on it. I. I don't know, maybe that's.

I don't know about that, actually, but. But I mean, that's. You think of heroin, right? You know, when we grew up, when you thought of somebody who used heroin, you thought of, like, a homeless person on the streets who was, you know, you saw half. Half asleep with a needle in their arm. Heroin addicts now look just like you and I dress just like you and I live in the same houses like you and I. It's amazing how Mainstream that addiction has become.

That's interesting. That's pretty scary. I mean, I've seen the videos in San Francisco. And also, just walking around San Francisco now, you'll. You'll be downtown, and there are, you know, drug addicts, junkies, you know, sitting on the sidewalk against buildings, lots of them per block with the needles in their arm. There was a video about some guy walking through the BART tunnels, and, you know, the hallway was lined with these folks. And, you know, I think to myself, where did they all come from? They came from all walks of life, but they end up there. And I'm sure what you're saying is on the way, there's a bunch of people that are highly functioning addicts in communities out there that haven't hit that stage of it. Maybe they won't, maybe they won't. Maybe they won't.

At some point, maybe they will. And they just didn't go from living in a community and having the things that we have to being homeless. This was a long road to misery. And whether it's drug addiction or mental illness or a combination of the two, we do a terrible job in this country of dealing with it. Now, my whole career, people will ask me a lot about addiction. I'm not an addiction specialist. That's not my training. I. I was on the hard side of this. I was on the law enforcement side of this. I spent 28 years putting bad people in jail. Not so much users of drugs, but those who sold it and made it, right. Those who have no morals about what they're peddling to these poor people, right? It's all greed. There's no conscience with these people.

It's just a business.

So now that I'm retired, the things I want to do, the things I want to be engaged in, like working with the county of Marin, working with the city of Mill Valley and coaching football. I spent. I spent 28 years putting people in jail. Bad people in jail. They didn't start out bad, right? Environmental factors made them bad. So when I get an opportunity to work with young people in a positive environment, if that somehow leads them to not go down a path and become a bad person, that's awesome. That's what I want. That's all I want now.

Right? That's awesome. Start at, you know, on the more hopeful, hopeful side of this. What, you know, since you're in this, what should, you know, parents and people be looking out for? How do people fall into this? You know, is it other. You know, you already hear about gateway drugs and this and that.

But kids who use, try drugs, use them, whether it's the peer pressure or just out of curiosity, I mean, they're kids, their brains aren't fully developed. It doesn't make them a bad kid. It just means they're a kid, right? They're a teen. Teens do risky things that we wouldn't do because they don't have the, their brain in place to fully see through all the repercussions of their actions. That's what makes them kids, that's what makes them do stupid things sometimes. But they're not stupid, they just, they're just not thinking, right? So for parents, I would say, you know, be involved in your kids lives, right? Talk to them and remember you're not their, their friend, you're their parent, right? You know, it's your job to protect them. And if protecting them means if you have concerns that they may be using drugs, we, when they go to school, search in their room, search their room. That's your job as a parent to protect them. And if, and if you don't know where your kids are at night because they're not comfortable telling you, that's not good. I mean, I tell my kids, I say, hey, you guys can go and do the things you want. I mean, my middle child, my 17 year old's driving now, right? And, and it's the same policy with him as I did with my daughter who's now going to be 21 next week. I said, baby, if you're somewhere and you don't feel comfortable or you don't feel like you can drive home, you call me. I don't care what time of the day or night it is and it'll be no questions asked. I will come and pick you up and get you home safe and I won't ask you a question about it if you don't want to tell me. But they got to know that they have that support. And you know, coaching football with my sons, you know, at some point I realized that, you know, they're teens now, they may not always want me there, involved in every aspect of their lives. I get it, it's time for me to give them their space, but I want to, you know, know them. And you know, I spent so much, so much, so many years missing birthdays and being out of town or being in town, but not even being home for four or five days because we're on this extended surveillance or we followed somebody to another city or whatever and I missed a lot. And I'm tired of missing A lot. I'm tired of missing a lot. I still have, I still have two of them in the house. But you just got to know your kids, take the time. You know, if there's social events where you're meeting their parents, of their friends, it helps because you just want to be involved in their lives. You don't have to be over their shoulder and be that helicopter parent that we all hear about. But if you're involved in their lives, then you'll know if things are, are going awry, if they're acting differently, if their grades are suddenly changing for the worse, the way they're taking care of themselves, you'll know. But if you're not, you won't see the signs.

Well, I appreciate the firsthand summary. I mean, you know, as a parent myself, I definitely think about these things and try to help my kids make good decisions. But yeah, they are their own people and they, I think kids these days, they, the world has changed so much since like you or I were in middle school or high school. They essentially, they can see everything, they can learn everything, their friends can learn everything. This stuff even in movies and media, it's surprising to me what is made fun of. But yeah, you have to, you know, you have to try to help them make a decision because they still want to take risks, but the risks they can take, you know, can end up blowing themselves up. And there's also just a much higher level of anxiety and worry with these kids because I think they're exposed to so much stuff and they, and then they can experiment with drugs to try and self medicate and then, and all buts are off because they can go down a bad, bad path quickly.

And it's not like going to the back alleys or the bad area of the city to buy these things. I mean, you can order it on the Internet, have it delivered to your house, you can. Well, what we see with a lot of the young teens is they're obtaining their, their prescription medications from their own parents medicine cabinet. So they're taking prescription medication that's not prescribed to them, but they're not buying it. They don't have to go anywhere to get it. I mean, I've had a number of operations, whether it's sports or work related. And you know, other people have had these things. You get prescribed these, these really high strength opioid based pain medications. You take a couple and the other 27 of 30 are sitting in your medicine cabinet. So you know, for parents, when was the last time you counted those pills? In your medicine cabinet, Are they still all there? Are the pills that are actually in the bottle really the pills that were supposed to be in that bottle, not just some Tic Tacs or some baby aspirin? I mean, not only are they taking it from their own parents medicine cabinet, they're raiding their friend's parents medicine cabinet or grandma and grandpa's, because we all know how much medications our seniors are getting prescribed.

All right, well, this is super helpful. We could have a whole podcast on parenting and drug use and everything else. Okay, so, you know, any other. I guess, you know, I had one last kind of random question which was, you know, would you encourage your own kids to go into law enforcement after this experience you've had?

It really was an amazing career. The places I got to travel, the people I got to meet, politicians, presidents of different countries, presidents of our country. And traveling around the world and seeing some amazing things. I mean, I've been to places around the world that I never, ever want to go back to again or would never take my family on vacation. But having those experiences, something I wouldn't trade for anything. You know, this is, this is not a career where you can develop an app or be a CEO and make millions of dollars a year. Right. This is, that's part of the. At least that's the trade off, you know, for having a pension and having health care is. I chose a profession where I knew that I was never going to make more than this much money and I would have to live within my means because there was never going to be that potential for that huge payoff.

Right.

To invent something or, or, you know, create this or, or lead this new company or whatever. But I'd like to think that when I left, I made the world, Sure. A better place.

So, yeah, you can still do it now. I mean, the largest number of companies are actually started by people over 50 these days. So, I mean, like, you know, you're relatively young person, got a lot of energy, you have a high degree of financial independence. If you wanted to, you could go great. You're, you know, you're here in Silicon Valley, you're close to it, you know, you could do it.

And I could. I know people in my profession who have left and gone out and started businesses and, you know, again, I missed a lot. I'm married to my high school sweetheart. We've been together for 35 years and married for 27. I like the flexibility of my time to spend more time with my beautiful wife and my kids. And we're we're doing just okay living here in one of the most expensive cities in the world. So I like where I'm at.

Sure. Well, I, I think being thoughtful about kind of your life and those trade offs and yeah, you've got a fair degree of financial autonomy, you've got great community time with your family, control over your time and you're being purposeful. That is essentially the recipe for being happy because you can go out. We've talked to us on other podcasts and kill yourself for 30 years doing this or that or you know, trying to make a, you know, 5, 10 million, 20 million bucks. And sometimes it succeeds, many times it doesn't. And at the end of the day if you look back and you're like, well what have I met? What, what are those trade offs? You know, because there are always costs to everything. Nothing is free. So it's good, it's great that you're, that you're being thoughtful about it. One last thing on the international stuff you mentioned kind of best and worst place or kind of places you would go and places you wouldn't. What are the places you would go? Well, what are those two buckets look like?

So I, I spent a little time in Asia. I was in, I was in the Philippines and, and Thailand. Gorgeous. I would like to explore Vietnam, I would like to spend more time in say Japan. I mean I've been so many places but there's still so many other places that I'd like to see. I loved my time in South America. The biodiversity in Ecuador, in the rainforest, the Galapagos Islands, the biodiversity of flora and fauna that you can't see anywhere else in the world is incredible. And just to go through some of those areas and see it and be there at sunrise or navigate down a river and these large animals just right along the riverbed. It's just travel in general and making that time to enjoy it more than from traveling down that river looking for the boat with three kilos of coke that's supposed to be coming the other way at 03:00 o'clock in the morning. It'd be better.

Yeah, sure. More relaxing. And what about you, what about places you would not go back to?

Well, it's the same thing. Like I spent some time along the Ecuador Colombian border. The, the governments of Ecuador and Colombia have very little control in some of these far reaching areas of their, of their territory. It's, it's extremely dangerous. I could say that for parts of Mexico as well. That's true for the northern border of Thailand with With me and more so there, there are places, you know, if, if you're in any major city in the United States, there's just some places you try not to go to at night. Right. They're not safe. That's the same for any country in the world. So you know, a lot of people have caused a lot of death and destruction to bring drugs to the United States. And I think people lose sight of everything that's involved in that little hit of coke or that joint they smoke or whatever. They lose sight of the big picture of the violence and the misery that's involved in that line of work and bringing that small tenth of a gram.

They're funding a whole ecosystem.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Runs over people and human trafficking and.

And a lot of it's interconnected. Drugs and terrorism are, are connected. Human trafficking and, and drug smuggling are connected. These are, these are organizations that they're just out to make money. And whether it's, you know, trafficking people or trafficking drugs or, or promoting terrorism, they could care less.

So when you were overseas, did you interact with a lot of expats like live with and did you see older folks? Because you know, one of the things with our community is people are retiring overseas and you know, South America, you can go to Mexico, you can go.

To various places, places that have been historically famous for us retirees in parts of Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, very much so. And we, we met a number of them. You know, having my parents, you know, luckily still still with me and my in laws still still with us and, and a big extended family. While it'd be wonderful say to live in Ecuador, I, I speak the language, I know a lot of people. But still you're far from home. Like I was in Ecuador and, and my father got real sick and, and is not a quick thing. Even if you could get a flight out that same day and during the height of the tourist season, good luck with that. You still getting from Quito, Ecuador to Phoenix, Arizona was a, was a minimum, a 24 hour event between connections and layovers and getting a flight. So, so that was a big wake up call to me that, you know, do you think I'm getting on an airplane not knowing if my dad's going to be alive when I get off at the connection.

Right. Yeah.

So that's a big thing for me. Sure is being closer to family.

Would you. Okay. So you personally probably wouldn't spend more of your retirement overseas just because of the distance and logistics or maybe certain places.

Yeah. At this age, not on a full Time basis?

No. Okay.

Full time basis.

Do you feel like the expats that are in some of these countries that might be more risky are fully aware of the risks and know are quote unquote, street smart about, like why to.

Be so I've talked to a few of them and at the beginning there were things that they didn't quite think through. Healthcare, access to healthcare, while things are very inexpensive. But that was, that was a number of the issues some, some people raised. To me, not so much issues, but things they didn't quite think through at the beginning was access to good health care. As they got older, living in another country, the language barrier didn't seem to be a big issue. They enjoyed the fact that their Social Security checks or their, their limited pensions went so far that, that they, their standard of living was higher than it would have been in the United States.

Right.

And that's what a lot of them were looking for.

Yeah. Wow. All right. Well, I think we've covered a lot of stuff. We have any questions for me or anything like that or.

No, I would just say if for people who are retiring at a young age, like myself, being retired from your career doesn't mean you're retired from everything. I fortunately still have kids in the house, so I have a regimented schedule around them getting up, make sure they go to school and getting them breakfast and, and things like that. But you want to stay active, you want to have a schedule. And it can be, you know, we're going kayaking at 9 o' clock or we're going to hike Mount Tam at 10:30 today, whatever it is, have a schedule as you ease into not getting up and going to work every morning. Have something that keeps you on track.

Is your wife still working?

She is.

Okay, how does that, how does that go? Well, so you have a much more flexible schedule.

Yeah, my wife works from home.

Okay.

And so she has a very flexible schedule as well. I mean, my wife had. This is her third career because with all the times that I was moved, this is the seventh house that I've lived in since we were married. She's actually had to give up her first two careers for me. So my wife is a saint for that. And just having that flexibility that she has now to take her job wherever we go is something she had to learn to adapt to based on my career. So, you know, her first career, she was actually making more money a year than I was. And then we got up and moved. So that was a huge difference. But.

Well, that's cool. That you're making it work. All right. Thanks, Bruce, for being on our show. Thanks, Dado, for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening? Thanks for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at New Retirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so that they can make the most of their money and time. We offer a powerful retirement planning tool and educational content that you can access@newretirement.com and we've been recognized as Best of the Web by groups like the American association of Individual Investors.