Time to Re-Think Retirement?

According to CNBC, 70% of Americans over the age of 50 are reconsidering their plans for retirement. In factories across the country, robots are now taking their place on the factory floor, but they're not necessarily replacing humans. And speaking of replacing humans, the current administration in Washington is attempting to do something unprecedented. Firing a Fed governor. All that and more today. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome to this special edition of Filter with TJ Walker. This is going to be a truncated version today. I am on the road, about to start some speaking and training today in Silicon Valley. So this will be an abbreviated version. Let's hop right in this. According to cnbc, a new survey by an insurance company, F and g show that 70% of workers over the age of 50 are contemplating pushing back their retirement date. About half of them are responding to concerns over money, but the other half are just concerned about, well, I may live a lot longer, what do I do? So this is a subject matter I feel passionately about. What's the real message here? It's not 1910. The idea that you're going to pretty much die at 65, therefore you've only got a couple of years to sit back on the couch or the rocker and play with the grandchildren is an outdated mode. You don't have to stay in the same job you don't like forever, but you should never actually retire from being useful to the world. Whether it's for money or not. You should make your decisions on when to retire not based necessarily on need, but necessarily on your wants, your want to contribute to the world. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. Yes, if you're doing a hard manual labor job and it's tiring and back breaking and you don't like it, I have got no problem with you retiring from that job. But here's the thing that we see again and again and again from research, from countless studies, plus what I just see in actual real life with friends and family. If you go from working more or less full time to being so called retired, what happens in so many cases is you get up, you kind of scroll the news, eat a leisurely breakfast, have a cup of coffee, have another cup of coffee, look at the news again, think about what am I going to eat for lunch? Before you realize it, your whole day is gone. Before you realize that, your whole week is gone. And you look back though, what did I do last week versus the week before? Absolutely nothing. Now you understand that's not everyone. Some of you do a fantastic job of Devoting your lives to community service, helping people, helping people in need, donating your time at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. You're retired from your money making days. Now you're giving back to the community. If that's you, fantastic, wonderful, I praise you. But sadly, that is not what's going on with so many Americans and indeed people in wealthier countries around the world. They're wasting their retirement. Again, I'm not saying you've got to be on this treadmill and die at the office. The old saying go, no one ever says on their death row. I really wish I'd spent more time at the office. But people do often have regrets of I wish I'd started that business. I wish I'd written that novel. Now, you may start writing a novel and never make any money from it because the chances of any novelist making money, they're not zero, but they're about as close to zero as it can be. But at least do something. Have a purpose to get up in the morning. Because here's a little secret that many of you don't want to hear. I don't necessarily want to hear, but your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, they don't need to have full access to you seven days a week, 24 hours a day. They really don't. It's not going to bother them at all if you continue to work. Now, again, if you were in a profession where you were flying around the world and gone for weeks at a time and spending three nights a month at home, sure, get off the road, spend more time with your family and friends, do the things you want to do. But the idea that you can't have a rich, rewarding life and still practice some profession is nonsense. Why do we see billionaires like Paul McCartney and Jerry Seinfeld continuing to tour around the world performing for people? It's not for the money. It's because it gives them joy to do work, to make people happy, to entertain people. Now, we can't all be entertainers, but we can all do something useful. Arnold Schwarzenegger, someone that many of you may have mixed feelings about. But he's been very eloquent in the last few years about at this stage of his life. He's, he's more than three quarters of a century old. Now. He just wants to be useful. Whether that's shoveling the manure from his pet goat or pony in his backyard to continuing to make movies and commercials. He doesn't need it for the money. He's fabulously wealthy, but he's Actively engaged in the world, trying to have his finger in as many pies as possible. I think there's something admirable about that. So I am not troubled at all by this survey showing 70% of workers really rethinking their idea of retirement. I think you need a plan for continuing to be useful. Frankly, I wish we'd just get rid of the word retirement. You retire when you die. And yes, you can phase out of one job, go to the next job. You may phase from one job that pays well to a job that pays very little, or maybe doesn't pay at all. But still think of it as a job. I remember a client of mine I had many years ago, two decades ago, and she started the Ronald McDonald House in New York City. It was a full time job. She went to the office every day, she managed people, she paid herself a salary of $1 per year, and she was doing that at a fairly advanced age. She had purpose every day. She was someone of means who could have spent all of her time with the ladies who lunch, all of her time shopping. But no, she had a purpose, she had a job. And I highly recommend to all of you, don't retire. Spend more time to travel, yes, spend more time with kids, grandchildren, yes, but do not retire. It is the fool's gold of leisure. Because ultimately, if every single day is a vacation, then nothing is a vacation. You'll never have a vacation. The whole concept of vacation is in contrast with days of work. You will enjoy your vacation time, you will enjoy your travel time much more if you actually spend some time working every day. I hope to be right here. Not next week, next month, next year, five years. I hope to be right here 30 years from now. Maybe that's ambitious, maybe you want to watch me then. But I'm hoping to be active and vital and participating in the world at a useful level. Ideally, in a way that makes money for me, my children, grandchildren, maybe great grandchildren. I don't think I'll have great children, great grandchildren, 30 years, but you get my drift. So I would love for you to be able to retire from one job because you no longer need money to work, to live, that's fine, but you need to be on a path if you want the ultimate fulfillment and happiness in your life. You need to have a purpose beyond simply. I'm going to get up today and read and watch Wheel of Fortune, which unfortunately, you could say it's a cliche, you could say it's not fair, but that is the reality for many retirees around The US and around the globe. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show, whether you're watching or listening. New episodes drop every single day. And if there's a little notification option where you are now, go ahead and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. According to the New York Times, Robots for Rent are really creating an impact in the United States in factories, regarding automation. Now, before you say let's get the pitchforks, let's burn them down, they're coming for us. They're going to make us all irrelevant. They're going to make us all unemployed. Calm down a minute. That's not quite the situation. Actually, some good news about what's going on. So here's the real message here. Robots are working their way into factories across the United States and around the world, and they're being employed. Actually, they're not just being bought, they're being rented. And they're doing heavy lifting hour after hour after a day in jobs that most Americans simply can't do. Not because they're not hard working, but because it's backbreaking. So if a robot comes to your factory, don't start with the pitchforks and the torches. Start by thinking, now maybe I could do something that really uses my talents in a richer way. Let's dig a little deeper here. We live in a world of AI and robots and technology that increasingly has people on edge. Rightfully so, Certainly, if you are one of the several million car drivers, cab drivers, truck drivers in America, you have to be worried about the idea of automation making you unemployed and unemployable. But not every example of technology is a one for one replacement of a human being. The New York Times profiles a company, S and F Foods, that packages foods that's extraordinarily heavy. And it involves lifting pallets from shipments all day long. According to Mike Callaha, the plant manager, the robots are a solution. They make frozen food for school cafeterias. And don't get me started on how school cafeterias rely on frozen food. But they do. We'll leave that debate for another day. Here's what's interesting. These robots are quite expensive. Half a million dollars for a particular robot that would lift these very heavy pallets of frozen food from one place, put them on a truck to go away, and the company in question couldn't justify the expense. But there was a solution. There's a company called Formic. It's based in Woodbridge, Illinois. And they install the computer, the robot, and then they just charge it out as if it were an employee. So it costs about $23 an hour, which is roughly the same as what a human being makes in this plant. According to the manager, we have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier. We're a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day. And it was a back breaking job. So here they're able to use these rental robots to do heavy, heavy lifting. Now, according to the New York Times, roughly 244,000 manufacturers in the United States, about 93% have fewer than 100 workers and 75% have fewer than 20. So there's a tremendous number of manufacturing plants that are really small and they don't have the capital to go out and build these robots or to buy them for half a million dollars. But renting them and paying them as an employee is an opportunity. Now, the chief executive of Formic, Simon Forhead, said, this is where the opportunity is, the small manufacturers. And could this lead to robots getting rid of every single job? Yes. Am I asking you as a warehouse worker, a factory worker, to sit back and say, oh, they're never going to compete with us. I've got a safe job? No. I don't think any employee, any worker in the modern world, including me, can just sit back and say, time to coast. I don't have to worry about technology because very soon there may be news analysts, communications analysts that are completely AI created that put me out of business, although I'm trying to get ahead of that because I have my own tjwalker AI. But we all have to be worried and a little bit anxious and therefore motivate ourselves to learn a skill higher up the value chain. Because when it comes to just lifting £200 here and moving it over here, that is now something robots can do and do quite effectively. And they're doing it not necessarily because they've created the perfect hand. It's very difficult to create through robots all the ways a finger can move and the good old opposable thumb, which is the best thing that ever happened to human beings and help differentiate us from other animals who would like to eat us, that's not quite there yet with robots, as I understand. But to be able to use suction to pick things up, place it in generally the right location and then release the suction, that is actually superior in robots because it can do it without getting tired, without getting sick, without needing a coffee break, without needing a restroom break without needing a lunch break, without needing bonuses. So I think we're going to see a lot more of these robotics being rented as if they were employees. Now this, of course, for people who are obsessed with the idea that AI is becoming sentient, it does bring forth sort of black mirror concepts and plot devices of at what point does this robot deserve the full integrity and the rights of a human being? I'm not going to delve into that yet today. For right now, look at what appears to be a good thing for American manufacturing, which is this idea that robots can be there to enhance manufacturing processes and to take away some of the absolute toughest jobs that are backbreaking in nature because it's heavy, heavy lifting. There's a lot of talk about from all sorts of ends of the political spectrum, how do we bring manufacturing back to America? Well, one thing that might help is having the most backbreaking jobs outsourced to robots. Because I know I like to think of myself as in shape, I like to think of myself as strong and I lift weights every day. But what I want a job where I have to lift a 65 pound pallet of frozen food all day long. I would last about five minutes. And if you're honest with yourself, I think you might admit the same thing. Even if you can do it, would you want to do it? I want more for you. That's the premise of this show, Filtered with TJ Walker. We look at the top news stories of the day, filtered through the lens of communication skills and personal development, all with the goal of making you more successful in every aspect of your personal life as well as your professional life. Lots more to come or I wish I should say some more to come. Today's truncated version of Filtered with TJ Walker. Back in a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following. You don't need a new degree. You don't need another expensive coach. You need the right communication habits. And I'll teach them to you in just a few minutes a day. @mediatrainingworldwide.com I've created the most comprehensive library of online communication and personal development courses anywhere. You'll learn public speaking, media training, persuasion, executive presence, and more. These are the same methods I've taught to world leaders, but now they're affordable and accessible to everyone. You can start for free and upgrade anytime. 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I've trained presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs and now you can get the same wisdom in a fast, affordable format. Go to tjwalker.com books and download your copies instantly. Thanks for joining me live today and Klaus is with us today. Klaus, thank you for joining us. Good to hear from you. Let us know what you have on your mind. This is filtered with CJ Walker where every day we look at the top stories in the business world, in technology, economics and cultural events, and we analyze it through the filter of communication skills and personal development skills. So always love to hear from you. Mark your calendars. This show is officially launching September 2, 2025, exactly one week from today. We're in still sort of a test mode right now, but then it'll be available on every audio podcast, every video platform, and we really hope to be omnipresent at that point. So it's going to be quite exciting. I'm coming to you today live from the Bay Area in San Francisco, the great state of California. It's nice to be here. I went for a walk this morning. It was 61 degrees. A nice change from South Florida where it's 91 pretty much every day. Speaking of change, how do you like the number 80 or specifically 80%? Well, guess what? If you're an American, that's what you might get in terms of your inflation if history is to be the judge. Just a few years ago, Turkey, with its right wing autocrat, took control of their version of the Federal Reserve. The dictator of that country started appointing his henchmen to run their currencies and their Federal reserve, they got 80% inflation. That's what happens when a country loses the independence of its banking system. And that's what's happening in the United States, in case you haven't heard. The recent news is that President Trump has announced that he is firing Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve. Now, you can't legally do that, but as we've all seen in the last six months, what is constitutional, what is legal, bears no weight whatsoever on what President Trump does or says he's doing. And quite often the courts just fall down and say, whatever you want, Master. The Congress that's supposed to provide a check on the president says, whatever you want, master. Just don't say anything mean about us on social media. We're seeing it again. Okay, so what's the bottom line? If you and I and everyone else, if we sort of sit back and say, well, let's just give up, let's let this president fire anyone he wants in the Federal Reserve and put his henchmen there, don't be surprised if we get 80% inflation the way Turkey did with its right wing dictator and its independence of its version of the Fed. Let's dig a little deeper here. This is troubling at many levels now, for, for decades, America's conservatives, Republicans, right wings, libertarians warned us, they warn all of America, that we are getting to the point where government is getting stronger. You're going to have a government that tries to influence every single aspect of life, every university, every cultural institution, trying to take over the media, trying to take over private sector businesses. This socialism is creeping and no one will be safe, no individual will be safe from government oversight because whoever's the head of that socialist government can say, oh, I don't like that guy, let's send the secret police to get them, let's investigate them. The old axiom is a police officer could say, give me 10 minutes to follow someone on the road, I'll give you a good reason to pull them over a stop, a headlight, something they did wrong. Well, that's what we're seeing out of Washington these days. And it is troubling. Let's dig a little deeper. The irony, of course, is the very same conservatives, right wingers, MAGA people who've been warning us of this socialistic takeover of every institution in the country where no individual is safe from big government coming in and destroying their lives. They're the ones supporting this guy Trump. And it's absolutely bat poop, insane and it's absolutely an atrocity. We are seeing the foundations of our democracy melt away in front of our very eyes. Now, the, the alleged crimes of Lisa Klook is that she supposedly committed fraud in a mortgage, applying for a mortgage. Now, the idea that Donald Trump and his minions are accusing other people of fraud regarding real estate, I mean, it's, it's kind of like Paul Pot accusing someone else of manslaughter because they, you know, they left keys in their car and someone took it and got injured. It's that absurd. It's that silly. With Donald Trump for years and years and years and years having been accused and found specifically guilty of lying on so many applications for loans for his real estate properties and overly inflating his prices, and he's committed all sorts of fraud regarding real estate. By any objective measure to say that this Fed governor, Lisa Cook, should be removed. She hasn't been, she hasn't been formally accused of a crime. She hasn't been tried. She hasn't been convicted. She hasn't been anything. She has been guilty of one thing. She's been guilty of being a Democrat. Well, three things. Guilty of being a Democrat, guilty of being a woman, and guilty of being black. Now, if you doubt me on that, just ask yourself, how often does Trump come down on anyone who is a white Republican in office right now who does what he says? If you do what he says, you can commit any crime, you can commit any atrocity. You can be the most wildly incompetent person in the world. And Trump will say, here, run the Department of Defense. Doesn't matter how many crimes you've committed, how many women you've beaten, it just doesn't matter. If you're with me, you get all the power, you get the keys to the kingdom. But if you dare be a member of an opposing political party, out you go. I'm going to use the entire force of the federal government, every agency, the irs, every banking regulatory agency, every mortgage regulatory. We're going to dig, dig, dig, dig until we find something where if you squint the right way, we're gonna say, oh, you're a criminal. You have to go. A lot of you are sitting out there saying, well, he didn't come after me today, so I'm gonna keep quiet. Well, keep that up. And I think you're gonna find at some point, they are going to come after you. You're going to be seen as insufficiently loyal, because, let's face it, you know, he came after the liberals. And you said to yourself, I'm not a liberal. I'm not. I'm going to be quiet. They came after the progressives. Oh, I'm not a progressive. I'm going to keep quiet. They came after the Democrats kicked them out of office. Ah, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not going to worry about that. Then they started coming after people like Chris Christie and John Bolton, card carrying members of the Republican Party, card carrying conservatives. And they used the full force of the government, for example, raiding John Bolton's house, starting investigations against the former head of the FBI. And all for the alleged crime of suggesting the slightest bit of criticism against Dear Leader, the great orange one. These are troubling times indeed, folks. I don't like to be a fear monger, but at some point when enough atrocities are committed and enough pillars of a democratic foundation are chiseled away, the only rational thing is to fear. But then mobilize that to make things better. That's what I'm trying to do right here. Unfiltered with TJ Walker. Again, this is not a political punditry show. We're trying to analyze communication messages through the aspect of looking at top stories in business news, economic news and culture news. But one of the reasons people don't like authoritarian dictators is they tend to meddle in every aspect of life, every aspect of business, technology, culture. That's been one of the beauties of the United States democratic experiment is we had this idea that, okay, the vast, vast, vast majority of society, of capitalism, the market is going to be individually controlled by people outside of the government. That's what made America great. And that idea is under assault, which is why I don't really have much choice other than to comment on what's going on in politics. Because part of what I try to do is help you discern messages. And the message is very clear right now coming out of Washington. If you do not back Dear Leader in every other aspect, a full force of the government can come down on you and destroy your life. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. This truncated version of Filtered with TJ Walker. See you again tomorrow.