By Mike Drak This is a follow up article to Mike Drak’s post: Surviving In A Mad Max World Recognizing that the old life model no longer works we created a new one, better suited to life in the 21st century. This new model is also not just for boomers, but for people at all the different stages of life. This approach that I am sharing was originally developed and shared in our book “Victory Lap Retirement” (VLR). Instead of focusing strictly on retirement the Victory Lap Retirement Model consists of four stages with becoming financially independent (FI) as early in life as possible as being a ..read more

By Mike Drak I’ve been a big fan of the Mad Max series of films, and while I enjoyed them and the message they conveyed I never thought it could ever happen to us. But now I’m thinking maybe I was wrong. Mad Max is a story about a future Australia where the country was experiencing societal collapse caused by runaway capitalism, human greed, and exploitation of resources and each other. The rule of law and established power structures failed, and scavengers, criminals and gangs were free to assert their own modes of violent rule over others. Sounds somewhat similar to what people are experienc ..read more

By Susan Williams Who is in your tribe? Who are the people you go to when you need friendship, support or comfort? There is a reason why this is so important. There is strong evidence of the benefits of having a supportive social network as we age. In fact, not having social relationships can be a significant health and mortality risk. Some research discovered; “… the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical ..read more

By Mike Drak Truth be told, I don’t enjoy reading retirement planning/finance books as I find most of them dry, complicated, and I usually end up with a headache while reading them. But having said that I’m forced to read them because I’m not overly confident with the quality of advice that I get from the bank these days. Sometimes I feel like I know more about retirement planning than the people advising me do, and knowing that bothers me because it shouldn’t be that way. The skillset for decumulation (drawing down your retirement assets) is quite different than wealth accumulation. You may d ..read more

By Susan Williams How much sleep do you get each night? Is it more then 6 hours? There are some reasons that this is important. Especially when it comes to your brain health and your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. In the following TedTalk given by sleep scientist Matt Walker, he shares the research they have discovered about sleep and the association it has with the risks of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. Just something to consider and some very good reasons to get a good nights sleep.   The post The Relationship Between Sleep and Alzheimer’s Disease appeared first on Booming Encore ..read more

By Susan Williams The following story is both heart warming and heart wrenching all at the same time. Darlin Newey is 89 years old and delivers pizza. He was recently given a gift of $12,000 by some kind hearted people as a result of a TikTok campaign they had launched to help support him. As you watch the story unfold, you can just see how meaningful this financial gift was to this gentleman. What I find so sad however is that this man at 89 years old had to continue working  30 hours a week just to pay his bills. Unlike others who may still be working because they wanted to, he was actu ..read more

By Susan Williams Have you heard of “workampers”? They are older people living on the road and travelling around the country in search of seasonal work. Some are doing it because they enjoy it. For many others it is out of necessity. But these retirement nomads are an emerging trend developing throughout the United States. The pandemic has escalated this situation as more jobs are being cut and older workers are being disproportionately displaced forcing more to look for work – wherever they can find it. Also Read: Can We Really Consider It Retirement When It’s Forced? In the following vi ..read more

By Mike Drak I like to ponder on things and I thought I would share some thoughts arising out of the pandemic relating to time and personal freedom. I found them interesting and hopefully you feel the same way. COVID-19 taught us how boring retirement must be when you have more free time than you know what to do with. Before the pandemic, people complained about not having enough time to do things, and then many of them quickly had too much time on their hands. Sure sounds a lot like Retirement Hell to me. During the self-isolation and enforced downtime of the pandemic, time slowed to a crawl ..read more

By Susan Williams I just read a rather disturbing, yet probably accurate, view of a day in the technological life of a millennial. In the article entitled, How Work Became An Inescapable Hellhole published by Wired, the author shares her day from the moment she opens her eyes until she goes to sleep and how many technology touches she has throughout the day. I counted at least 29 different platforms or activities (and this is probably way under estimated). Her day made me exhausted just reading about it. This past week I also watched watched the documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix. If yo ..read more

By Mike Drak “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently… because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs I love learning about bad-ass people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties who have ripped up the old retirement rule book on aging and retirement. I fondly refer to them as Retirement Rebels, as they refuse to follow the old-fashioned beliefs about “old people” and traditional retirement. Retirement rebels are authentic and li ..read more