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Do You Trust What You Built? · After the Rush Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: There is a number in a bank account with my name on it.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: I built it over decades,
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SPEAKER_00: one disciplined decision at a time,
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SPEAKER_00: and I know exactly how I built it because I was awake for every dollar.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: A few months ago, I stood in a store holding a coat.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: My old one was finished.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: The lining had given out,
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one pocket had a hole I kept forgetting about until my keys
0:25
fell through it,
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SPEAKER_00: and the black had gone to the tired gray that black coats go to.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: The new coat was warm and well made and fairly priced.
0:36
I could have bought 10 of them and the number in the account
0:39
would not have noticed.
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SPEAKER_00: I put it back on the rack.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: I would like to tell you I put it back because I didn't love it.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: That would be a tidier story.
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The truth is I put it back the way I used to put things back
0:55
when I was 22 and
0:56
SPEAKER_00: genuinely could not afford them.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: The same reflex, the same small automatic no.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Except I was not 22 and I could afford it.
1:07
And the only thing between me and a coat that actually closed
1:12
against the wind was
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SPEAKER_00: a habit I had built so deep I no longer heard it running.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: That is what this episode is about.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Not how to save.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: You know how to save.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: That is how you got here.
1:29
This is the stronger problem waiting on the other side of the
1:33
careful life.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: How to spend what you built.
1:37
And why it turns out to be one of the hardest things a
1:40
disciplined person ever has to learn.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to After the Rush.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm Catherine McDowell.
1:59
This is a podcast for people in or approaching the 55 plus
2:03
chapter who are building
2:05
SPEAKER_00: an intentional,
2:06
SPEAKER_00: honest,
2:06
SPEAKER_00: well-constructed next act.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Not the one in the brochure, the real one.
2:12
Today the subject is money and a particular shift inside it
2:17
that almost no one is
2:18
SPEAKER_00: warned about because from the outside it does not look like a problem.
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SPEAKER_00: From the outside it looks like success.
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SPEAKER_00: You saved,
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SPEAKER_00: you were disciplined,
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SPEAKER_00: you have enough or something close to it,
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SPEAKER_00: and then the income stops.
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SPEAKER_00: And you find out that the whole skill set that carried you here,
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SPEAKER_00: the saving,
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SPEAKER_00: the holding,
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SPEAKER_00: the careful no,
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SPEAKER_00: is the wrong skill set for what comes next.
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SPEAKER_00: And no one handed you the new one.
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SPEAKER_00: I should say this plainly the way I always do when money is a subject.
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I am not a licensed financial planner and nothing here is
2:56
financial advice.
2:58
What I offer is the view of someone who has lived the financial
3:03
conversation at
3:04
every level from not having enough to feed two people to
3:08
managing budgets with a
3:09
great many zeros and who learned a long time ago that money is
3:14
never only about
3:15
SPEAKER_00: money.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Here is something that surprised me,
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SPEAKER_00: and I'm a person who has thought about money her entire life.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: The paycheck was never just money.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that the way the motivational people mean it.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean something specific, almost mechanical.
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SPEAKER_00: As long as a paycheck was coming,
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SPEAKER_00: every dollar you spent was a dollar that was going to be replaced.
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You could spend with a kind of background confidence because
3:48
the river kept flowing.
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The account dropped on the first of the month and filled back
3:52
up on the 15th.
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SPEAKER_00: Spending did not feel like loss.
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SPEAKER_00: Because it wasn't lost, it was circulation.
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SPEAKER_00: The paycheck was permission.
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Quiet,
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standing permission to use what you had because more was always
4:08
on the way.
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SPEAKER_00: And then it stops.
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SPEAKER_00: And the river stops with it.
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SPEAKER_00: Now every dollar you spend is a dollar that is not coming back.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not spending from a flow anymore.
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SPEAKER_00: You're spending from a pool.
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SPEAKER_00: And a pool, unlike a river, only does one thing when you take from it.
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SPEAKER_00: It gets smaller.
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SPEAKER_00: Most people feel this before they can explain it.
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They notice that spending money they have plenty of suddenly
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feels different,
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SPEAKER_00: heavier,
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SPEAKER_00: faintly alarming.
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SPEAKER_00: and they assume the feeling is about the amount.
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SPEAKER_00: It usually isn't.
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SPEAKER_00: It is about the direction.
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SPEAKER_00: For your entire adult life, the arrow pointed up.
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SPEAKER_00: Income in, save, the number climbs.
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Now you're being asked to watch the number you spent 30 years
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raising begin on
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SPEAKER_00: purpose to come down.
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SPEAKER_00: There's no rehearsal for that.
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You wake up one morning on the far side of the paycheck and you
5:13
are expected to do
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comfortably the exact thing you spent a lifetime training
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yourself never to do.
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I think of it as two completely different models and the
5:26
trouble is that almost all
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SPEAKER_00: of us only ever learn the first.
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SPEAKER_00: The first is the building model.
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SPEAKER_00: Income comes in
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SPEAKER_00: You cover what you need, you set something aside.
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SPEAKER_00: The goal, stated or not, is to move the number upward.
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SPEAKER_00: We get good at this.
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Some of us get so good at it that it stops being a strategy and
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becomes a personality.
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SPEAKER_00: The saver is not someone who saves.
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The saver is someone who is saving continuously as a way of
6:01
standing in the world.
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SPEAKER_00: The second is the drawing model.
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SPEAKER_00: The income stops or shrinks to a fraction of what it was.
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The money you live on now comes out of the thing you spent
6:15
decades building.
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The number goes down,
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slowly if you planned well,
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predictably if you are careful,
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but down.
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SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that gets left out.
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The switch from the first model to the second is not a
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financial adjustment.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a psychological reversal.
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You are being asked to take an instinct you sharpened for 30
6:42
years and run it backward.
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SPEAKER_00: The discipline you are proud of,
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SPEAKER_00: the discipline that is,
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SPEAKER_00: in a lot of cases,
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SPEAKER_00: the entire reason you have anything to draw on,
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SPEAKER_00: is suddenly working against you.
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It Is Speaking To You In The Same Voice It Always Used To The
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One That Says Don't
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Touch That And For The First Time In Your Life The Voice Is
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Wrong I Watch People To
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Try To Solve This With Math They Get The Projection The Advisor
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Runs The Numbers
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Shows Them The Line That Does Not Run Out Walks Them Through
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The Safe Withdrawal
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SPEAKER_00: Rate And They Nod And They Understand Every Word
7:27
and they go home and still cannot make themselves spend because
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the math was never the problem.
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SPEAKER_00: The projection answers a question they are not actually asking.
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SPEAKER_00: The real question is not, will the money last?
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SPEAKER_00: Most of them know the money will last.
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SPEAKER_00: The real question, the one sitting underneath is, am I allowed?
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SPEAKER_00: That question does not have a number for an answer.
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And it is the one this whole episode is really about I know
8:00
this from the inside
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I'll tell you how I came from nothing I mean that plainly not
8:06
for a fact I was a
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teenage mother without a home doing arithmetic in real time
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because the arithmetic
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SPEAKER_00: was the only thing standing between me and disaster
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I learned early and at a level below language that money was
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survival and that the
8:23
way you survived was to want less than you had and never spend
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a dollar you had not
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SPEAKER_00: already earned.
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If you couldn't pay cash for it then,
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I could not have paid cash for it plus interest later.
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SPEAKER_00: So I didn't.
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That one rule held when I had almost nothing built every option
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I have today.
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It also does not come with an off switch This is the part I did
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not see coming I
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assumed that once I'd built some security the fear that drove
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me to build it would
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ease It does not ease The vigilance that kept me alive in
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scarcity is still running
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in abundance in the background all the time and it does not
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check the balance
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SPEAKER_00: before it fires It fired in that store over a coat
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It fires over things I have unquestionably earned and can
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unquestionably afford.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm not unusual.
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SPEAKER_00: I have sat across from women who built real wealth,
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SPEAKER_00: genuine,
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SPEAKER_00: hard won,
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SPEAKER_00: decades of work wealth,
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who cannot bring themselves to spend on their own comfort
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without a knot in the
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SPEAKER_00: stomach and a justification ready in case anyone asks.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because the money isn't there.
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Because the holding on is older than the money The reflex of
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protection runs deeper
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than any spreadsheet And it does not care in the slightest what
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the spreadsheet
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says We have a whole vocabulary for people who cannot stop
10:02
spending We have almost
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nothing for the other kind The people who built carefully for
10:08
40 years And then
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SPEAKER_00: cannot let themselves enjoy a single inch of what the building was for
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They are everywhere in this chapter A lot of them believe they
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are simply being
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responsible and some of them are and some of them are standing
10:24
in a store putting
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back a coat they actually need calling it discipline when it
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has quietly become
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something closer to fear There is a particular shape this takes
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and once you see it
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SPEAKER_00: you see it everywhere
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SPEAKER_00: It is the good thing saved for an occasion that never quite arrives.
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SPEAKER_00: The dishes too nice for a Tuesday.
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SPEAKER_00: The bottle being kept for something worth celebrating.
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SPEAKER_00: The trip that makes more sense next year.
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The sweater still in its tissue paper because the right day to
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wear it has not come.
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SPEAKER_00: None of these are about money.
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SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00: Each one is the same instinct wearing different clothes.
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SPEAKER_00: The instinct that says the good thing is for later,
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SPEAKER_00: for someday more deserving than this ordinary afternoon.
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SPEAKER_00: The problem with someday is that it keeps moving.
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SPEAKER_00: It is always a little further out from where you're standing.
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SPEAKER_00: And for people in this chapter, that is not a small philosophical point.
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SPEAKER_00: The runway is real, and it's not infinite.
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And the someday you keep deferring the good dishes to is made
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of a finite and
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SPEAKER_00: shrinking number of actual days.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to be grim about it.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be accurate, which is a different thing.
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If the careful habit of saving the best for later was all along
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quietly arranging
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SPEAKER_00: for the best to be used by someone else after you're gone,
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Then the habit has stopped serving the person it was built to
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protect You did not
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save the good china so it could be handled gently at an estate
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sale You saved it
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because it was yours and good and was meant to be used by you
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in your life which is
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happening now So let me say the thing I actually believe is
12:32
underneath all of this
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Stopping the income and beginning to live off of what you built
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is more than just
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SPEAKER_00: any projection or withdrawal rate,
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SPEAKER_00: a test of whether you trust with what you built.
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SPEAKER_00: Trust it to hold.
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SPEAKER_00: Trust yourself to have done the work right.
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Trust that the years of discipline added up to the thing they
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were always supposed
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SPEAKER_00: to add up to,
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SPEAKER_00: which was never a bigger number.
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SPEAKER_00: It was freedom.
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The number was only ever a receipt A lot of people fail the
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test of trust At least
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at first They fail it quietly And they give the failure kinder
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names Prudence
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Caution Being sensible Sometimes that is exactly what it is And
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I would never talk
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SPEAKER_00: anyone out of genuine prudence
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But sometimes it is a person who spent a lifetime building a
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house and then they
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SPEAKER_00: cannot make themselves walk through the door and live in it.
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Let me put a clinician's hat on it for a minute because this is
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real and not only a metaphor.
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SPEAKER_00: Financial fear lives in the body.
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SPEAKER_00: It is not an idea you're having.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a tightening,
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SPEAKER_00: a held breath,
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SPEAKER_00: a small spike of alarm that arrives in the instant before you spend,
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SPEAKER_00: faster than thought,
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SPEAKER_00: which is exactly why reasoning with it does not work.
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SPEAKER_00: You cannot out-argue a reflex.
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SPEAKER_00: The projection talks to a part of you that thinks.
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SPEAKER_00: The fear is in the part of you that flinches.
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Those are not the same part and the flinching one has had
14:20
decades of practice.
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SPEAKER_00: That is not a flaw in you.
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It is a well-trained nervous system doing precisely what you
14:30
taught it to do.
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SPEAKER_00: The work is not to call yourself irrational.
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The work is to teach the reflex slowly and with evidence that
14:41
the emergency is over.
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SPEAKER_00: I want to be useful here, not just observant.
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So here's what I have watched actually help people make this
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turn The first thing
14:53
is to name the switch out loud To say it plainly I spent my
14:58
life in the building
15:00
model And now I'm in the drawing model And they ask opposite
15:05
things of me And the
15:07
discomfort I feel is not evidence that I'm doing something
15:10
wrong It is evidence
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SPEAKER_00: that I'm doing something new
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SPEAKER_00: Naming it does not dissolve the fear,
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SPEAKER_00: but it stops you from stacking shame on top of the fear,
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SPEAKER_00: which is its own quiet tax.
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SPEAKER_00: The second thing surprises people.
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SPEAKER_00: They expect the advice to be loosen up.
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And loosening up on command is the one thing a disciplined
15:37
person genuinely cannot do.
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SPEAKER_00: So don't try.
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SPEAKER_00: Use the strength you actually have.
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SPEAKER_00: You were good at a plan,
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SPEAKER_00: so make a plan for spending,
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SPEAKER_00: the same way you once made a plan for saving.
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SPEAKER_00: Decide on purpose and in advance what this money is for.
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SPEAKER_00: Then treat spending it as keeping the plan, not as breaking it.
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SPEAKER_00: A careful person can spend freely inside a structure they trust.
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Ask that same person to spend freely with no structure at all
16:14
and they will freeze
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SPEAKER_00: every single time.
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SPEAKER_00: The structure is not the enemy of enjoyment here.
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SPEAKER_00: For people like us it's the doorway to it.
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SPEAKER_00: The third thing is to start small and start specific.
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Don't try to argue yourself into a whole new relationship with
16:34
money in the abstract.
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SPEAKER_00: Pick one thing.
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SPEAKER_00: One real concrete thing the building was supposed to be for.
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SPEAKER_00: Buy it and pay close attention to what happens in your body when you do.
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SPEAKER_00: Buy the coat.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Take the trip you keep moving to next year.
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SPEAKER_00: Use the good dishes on a Tuesday for no reason at all.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because spending is the point,
17:00
because you are teaching the reflex one small piece of evidence
17:04
at a time that it
17:06
SPEAKER_00: is safe to use what you built.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth thing is the hardest and the most important.
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SPEAKER_00: Sit with the possibility that the money was never the goal.
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SPEAKER_00: I know that is easy to say and hard to feel.
17:21
But you did not spend 40 years being careful So that the
17:25
largest possible number
17:27
Could sit in an account after you're gone You did it to be free
17:32
To be able to say
17:34
yes to what matters And no to what doesn't On your own terms
17:39
Without fear casting
17:41
the deciding vote If the discipline that brought you freedom
17:46
Has become the thing
17:47
SPEAKER_00: standing between you and using it
17:50
Then the discipline has outlived its assignment It served you
17:54
well It can be
17:55
thanked And it can be allowed to retire A little the same way
18:00
the career did I
18:03
started in a store Holding a coat I put back Here's the end of
18:08
that one I went home
18:09
without it And then I sat with the fact that I had stood in a
18:13
place of real
18:14
abundance And behaved exactly as I once behaved in a place of
18:19
real scarcity
18:20
and the two had become indistinguishable to a part of me that
18:25
never got the memo
18:26
SPEAKER_00: that things had changed.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: I went back the next week and bought the coat.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a small thing.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: It's also not a small thing at all.
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It was the first deliberate move in a practice I am still in
18:41
the middle of.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: The practice of living inside the life I spent decades building.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Instead of standing in the doorway admiring how sturdy it is.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: You built something.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: For a long time.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: At real cost.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: With a discipline most people never manage to hold.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: That discipline was never the point of your life.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: It was the toll you paid to arrive here.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And you're here now.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: The money is real.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: The only open question is whether you will let yourself live from it.
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SPEAKER_00: That is a better question than how much you have.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: It is the one I ask you to carry with you this week.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm Catherine McDowell and this is After the Rush.
19:29
If this one landed somewhere true,
19:32
pass it to someone you know who keeps putting the coat back.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's connect next week.