It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Wesley Knight 0:00
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Zandra Polard 0:44
Oh, good morning, Las Vegas. It's where I am. This is Andre Pollard, so glad you tuned in 91.5 jazz and more is your number one smooth jazz station in the nation. So today we're going to talk about retirement. Are you planning for your retirement? Are you ready? What are you going to do? Well, today I have Rick Morton, who is a teacher, mentor and coach, and we're going to be talking about retirement, all righty. So welcome to

Rick Morton 1:26
the show, Rick. Hey. Thanks for letting me come on. This is fantastic, for sure. Now

Zandra Polard 1:31
I see Rick Monday through Friday, and I think today was the longest conversation we've ever had by far. Yeah, so I want to welcome you. Thank you for coming in. It was short notice. But, you know, they say there's no such thing as a coincidence. I walked into his classroom, and he was talking to the kids about news casting, right, absolutely right. And I was like, Wait a minute. I have a show today. You want to come on, so thank you for coming in last minute. No, you are welcome. All right, so we're going to talk about retirement. Now, I know there's a correlation between retirement and mortality. I think everyone knows, or if you don't know, most people don't have a long life expectancy after retirement, unless they have planned for it, and there are certain things put in place right to have a optimal life expectancy. So you want to make sure. One of the number one things is you want to make sure that you are socializing? Yeah, absolutely.

Rick Morton 2:46
I think that's probably one of the most things of that human connection. Exactly, no one end up just shut up in the house and not know where to go during the day. Now, I'm not at a job, and that's definitely something you got to think about ahead of time, right?

Zandra Polard 2:58
Like, what do you do with your time? And then, you know, I also was reading that anxiety, you know, increases after retirement, because I think it's that thought pattern of, well, I'm so used to doing this every day, what am I going to do now? No,

Rick Morton 3:13
that's it. I, you know, my wife and I talk about this on a day to day basis. We're going to retire in a couple of years. And she knows I get quite crazy if I don't have something to do and so, but it's still something that we talk about quite often. I think you're right. I think that what you said a minute ago is probably the most important you gotta have a plan in place. You gotta think

Zandra Polard 3:32
about it, yeah, and then you know you're married, so that you know that that increases your lifespan. Is it wrong to say Praise the Lord? Yeah, no, it is not wrong. You may praise the Lord, but you live longer when you're married. Did you know that? I

Rick Morton 3:46
did know that I'd looked a lot of stuff up, not just today. I get to go over some of the stuff from after being invited on here. But I know she's the only reason I'm still on the planet. I know that's been together 33 years. Every morning I wake up and she's still there. I praise the Lord. All

Zandra Polard 4:02
right. Well, shout out to Mrs. Morton Absolutely. All right. So let's get back to now. You gave me some stats about pickleball. I think I heard a pickleball like once ever in my life. What the hell is pickleball? Well,

Rick Morton 4:21
Pickleball is actually it's crazy, because I'm a sports guy. I've been coaching for 45 years. I started playing sports probably to age eight or nine and and I've had to tail back a little bit now because my body's kind of falling apart, but, but a few years ago, about five or six years ago, I started getting involved in pickleball, and I just told my students in my class today a story where my friend and I had gotten good. We'd played for a couple years. We were pretty good at pickleball, these two and we were 60, and these 270 year old ladies, plus they didn't tell us their ages, wiped the court with us. Oh, wow. Pickleball has got to be a way for people, the seniors, to get out and actually, you know, do some things, and it's the. Fastest growing sport in America, really,

Zandra Polard 5:01
isn't it like a It's kind of like tennis, right?

Rick Morton 5:06
Yeah. In fact, I apologize. I forgot your audience isn't here with us. It is basically, if you took ping pong and tennis, throw in a little bit of racquetball, you're almost close to being there. It's use a wiffle ball. So it's a plastic wiffle ball that takes 90% of the speed out of it, okay? And so somebody like myself, that a lot in years, can actually get to the ball, but then actually do something with it. So it's been great though. My wife and I actually both love to get out and play pickleball once in a while, and it's an activity definitely add on to your list of things to check out in retirement. Okay?

Zandra Polard 5:39
And then another great thing to do is to volunteer Absolutely,

Rick Morton 5:43
absolutely. I've been very blessed lately. I've been working a lot with the Nevada homeless alliance. It's something that my nephew actually introduced me to a few years ago here in Nevada and Vegas, and they've really helped me to kind of see that's a problem that we we witness it every day. You know, driving down the road, yes, and, but we don't really think about it. And so that's something definitely, getting involved, find something that you can get passionate about,

Zandra Polard 6:09
right? That's because, I mean, you know, there's the local churches and stuff, but you know, everybody don't go to church. I'm not gonna lie. No, that's true, yeah, yeah. So then what do you do? Where do you reach out, right? And the place that you volunteer at. What is it? Again? Nevada homeless alliance, the Nevada homeless alliance, we have a huge issue with that out here. That's a great place to volunteer. Some time,

Rick Morton 6:33
I can tell you another place that really needs volunteers. Schools.

Zandra Polard 6:38
It's something difficult, like with schools, like, because you have to, like, go through a background check. And,

Rick Morton 6:43
you know what? Here's the thing, most schools, if they're if the charter school, especially, I've been involved in charter schools for the last 15 years, so I haven't done a lot with Clark County, but, but they'll pay for the background check if it's something that they really want help with, okay? And even if not, I think it's $15 they've really brought the rates down for things like that, so that you can get involved in in volunteering. Yeah, we want to make sure that, if you're coming in to spend time with kids, one on one, that we've got somebody that you know, that we can trust, and so, but it's so needed. You know, it's one things I talk about all the time. There's so many things I'm going to get out of the business in a couple of years here, and then I'm going to come back and volunteer. I want to make sure we're passing on these lessons that we've learned. It's getting more and more important to make sure that we're not losing that that culture of education going forward.

Zandra Polard 7:32
I like that. So getting back to the retirement and issues that are associated with it, depression is one, anxiety is another. Yes, you know, and like we said, it's important to socialize, right? Absolutely. Make a plan if you have a significant other, make a date. Have your date night. Date Night, right? Absolutely. And you know what is so intimate and wonderful, and satiating. Is that a word? Yeah, it

Rick Morton 8:05
is a very good word.

Zandra Polard 8:06
Yeah. Cook night, making a meal together, absolutely.

Rick Morton 8:10
Yeah. I have to explain to you, my wife and I don't think that food is a game. We both cook very well. I don't know the audience can tell, but you can tell by looking at me, I love food.

Zandra Polard 8:21
Yeah, you know what? You brought some basil in one

Rick Morton 8:24
time. Not me, my wife. She puts that green thumb in there. I put my I just get to carry up places after she's cut it off the tree or whatever. Okay,

Zandra Polard 8:32
so what are some of the things that you guys like to cook? Well, you

Rick Morton 8:35
know? I mean, years ago, we used to do this thing with couples like you're saying, make sure you get involved with people. Stay involved. Stay stay out there we would have, you know, ethnic food of the month kind of a thing. Say, Okay, this week we're gonna do or this month we're gonna do Cuban food. Okay? And everybody would bring a dish from from a Cuban it was something. It wasn't just like slow slap together. We spent time on this talking about, oh well, no, I want to do something with plantains. So I was also gonna do something with plantains, you know, or so, you know, just coordinate it to make sure. And it was always so amazing, you

Zandra Polard 9:07
know, it'd be so cute if you made it like that show chopped or something like that. Or, you know, like one of the cook shows no invite someone like me to be a judge and taste all of it.

Rick Morton 9:19
Well, you'll be invited to the next one we do, that's for sure. No, but I we're both really good at cooking. We've never minded is that? Is that a word says the English teacher, we've never been had a problem with spending money on a good meal, but it needs to be better than what we can do at home. And unfortunately for the restaurant industry, my wife and I both cook extremely well now, so we tend to spend less money when we go out to a meal, because she's can beat Gordon Ramsay's, you know, be Wellington. She's taken classes at CIR latab and things like that. I stick to chili and steaks and things, but I'm pretty good at a couple things myself.

Zandra Polard 9:55
Okay, well, I like that ethnic food night of the month. That's

Rick Morton 10:00
awesome. Greek was one of my favorites when we did it. And,

Zandra Polard 10:04
you know, one of the healthiest diets is the Mediterranean diet. Absolutely,

Rick Morton 10:07
I, you know, and I don't know, I don't remember all that. I just because my wife is the one that has the brains in the family and so, but, but, yeah, every time that we put that thing, I love that she actually just made a Greek salad last night, believe it or not, okay, probably what we'll have for dinner again tonight. So

Zandra Polard 10:22
give us some more advice about, you know, planning for retirement. How do we do that? How do we know we're going to have enough money? You know, that's

Rick Morton 10:30
a really good part of it. It really is, and I don't know that I've got that part away from the worry log yet. My point is this, you got to keep looking at it. It's going to keep changing. But, you know, get some opinions from someone else. We have a financial advisor we've used for years. It doesn't cost us a lot of money. It's not free, but, you know, it's a few bucks a year. Well,

Zandra Polard 10:50
actually, where we work, it is free. Oh, just so, you

Rick Morton 10:54
know, I didn't know, wait word,

Zandra Polard 10:57
oh, where you and I work, okay, it is free. I did not know that. Yeah, so check in with your place of employment, your HR, and see if a financial person is available to you at little to no cost.

Rick Morton 11:11
Fantastic. I will definitely do that. But that's, I mean, it's, it is things we I'm a budget guy. I'm a stat sheet guy. I've been a coach forever. Stats are really important, so I throw things on a budget and stuff. And because of that, we went through 25 years of relative, you know, brokeness. We weren't broke. Our kids didn't suffer from much, but we didn't do a lot of things. And when we met, we loved to travel. We met in Saudi Arabia, oh, wow, during the first Gulf War, and one of the only places you could imbibe in a

Zandra Polard 11:46
beverage, yeah, because you retired military. I forgot that from the Air

Rick Morton 11:48
Force. I did, I did 10 years active Air Force. I didn't actually retire from that. Sometimes I kick myself because I would have retired 30 years ago with 20 years, oh, it's a long time. Would have been 30 No, 20 years ago. I would have had 30 years ago out of 20 years, I

Zandra Polard 12:02
don't whatever. I don't know. I'm confused. But, oh

Rick Morton 12:05
yeah, 1990 I had 10, so 2020, so 24 years ago I would have had 20 years. But, but no, I mean, that's the thing, is that that I do still have medical benefits. I have medical insurance, or I have benefits from the military benefits, not medical benefits, but I have medical benefits from the Air Force. I have they throw me a couple of bucks of hearing loss. Oh, yes, but, and that all helps. But so many veterans, and if there's veterans out there listening to you right now, I need to make sure we're talking to them right now. Because here's the thing, so many of you don't realize the benefits that are available. And I'm not going to talk about politics at all during this. But I will tell you that when Trump was in office, he put in some systems for the VA, if that was the only thing he'd ever done, it's a lot easier now to get benefits than it used to be. And so because of Biden, and you know, I, I am not going to talk politics. I just know if you throw one name on, I gotta throw, well, Mr. Biden served after Mr. Trump, correct son. And I absolutely think there was some amazing thing Mr. Biden did as well, and Mr. Obama had done and all along the way, the problem is this, our veterans, for a long time were not very well taken care of. And so I'm glad to see the last two presidents at least, have done something about that, and it is gotten better. The medical here in town is amazing. Check all your resources, not just the military ones. Yeah.

Zandra Polard 13:22
And, you know, that's a great thing that you mentioned the military and veterans and their benefits and to check into them, because, like you mentioned your hearing loss, that's a part of your retirement. Absolutely. That is money that you will get for the rest of your life, rest of my life, yeah, tax free, yeah, and your wife, Should you happen to pass before?

Rick Morton 13:46
Yeah, she's probably hoping for that. I'm very happily married. My wife is somewhat happily married, and we and we do just very well with that.

Zandra Polard 13:53
Yeah, very good. So that's a but I just mentioned that because that is a piece of your retirement plan? Yes,

Rick Morton 14:02
yeah, no, for sure, no, but it is a lot more involved and getting ready to retire than I realized. I mean, I always just thought, I'm going to work 3040, 50 years, whatever, and then I'm going to be ready to enjoy life. 20 years ago, I stopped thinking like that, right? Because I started thinking, Okay, I need to make sure I've got a plan in place. I didn't. I spent every dime I had for the first 30 some odd years. I worked, and then my wife and I been together for a while, so we started looking at that aspect of it. But we also started looking at, well, what do we want to do? We want to be on the 1% of 1% list. And I don't know if you're familiar with that list, but it's the list of people that have been to every single continent in the world, the two of us have now hit five, okay, we need South America and Antarctica, and that's planned for 2028, nice. And so is that silly? Probably it's a little, you know, you think about it, that's a lot of money to throw at something. We worked hard for that money. And, you know, fortunately, three out of. Four of my kids make more money than I do now, so very proud of that and glad that I don't have to save all of my money for them. But yeah, no, there's definitely a lot of things to think about when you're thinking about retirement.

Zandra Polard 15:10
Oh, yeah. And then also, we talked about getting prepared with a financial advisor. Yes, we talked about some of the symptoms that come along with retiring, yes, but we have not talked about how much longer you have to work to retire. That's a good point. Oh, my God, I think I'm going to be 75 years old. You

Rick Morton 15:38
know what? They found out one of the things I had researched before and I saw again today. I actually I cheated today. Did I tell you I cheated today? No, I had my my high school speech and debate class helped me look up a lot of facts and statistics, because they're good at that. Okay, and so they found one that shocked me. Do you know that if you, if you're looking at retiring, most people retire before they're 70 years old, but let's say you put a date on it, and they did a study. And I don't remember that where the study was from, but it was Harvard. I think that had done the study sometime. If you just work one more year, you can add three times that to your longevity if you just work one more year. Okay, so let's say, if you decide you're going to retire, I'm going to retire at 65 The suggestion is no, it's no proof in it. But the suggestion is that those who would just work just maybe just work to 66 I might add some length to that. Okay, and I think that you kind of hinted on it earlier, when you were talking about you don't want to get to retirement. Suddenly have nothing to do, right? Most of us don't put that plan in place. It's, I don't know if you've worked a lot with people in the military, veterans that have gone out after 30 years, or athletes that have been very young age. They get to retire quite often, but they didn't have a plan in place. People that win the lottery, they don't have a plan in place, and five years later, after winning millions of dollars, they're broke. So so I think I love the opportunity to come on today and talked about that, but that plan in place. Are you familiar with the Leader in Me, the habits for Highly Effective People? No, it's something that I've been teaching for 15 or 20 years. I don't have to trademark to talk about it legally, but the bottom line is just the idea of putting a plan in place. So be proactive. Plan ahead. Set goals, set priorities, right? And just know that everything you do should have a reason that gets you closer to where you want to

Zandra Polard 17:29
go. Okay, so everything you do is getting you closer to South America and, yeah,

Rick Morton 17:34
just not making big decisions the other place south so South America and Antarctica and Antarctica got to go see some more penguins. All right, so,

Zandra Polard 17:42
but go on. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, it's just,

Rick Morton 17:45
I mean, I'm excited about the opportunity to retiring. I know that. You know, we've had in our life, we've had some people that had anxiety. My two of my children were diagnosed clinical, clinical depression. They both have it well under control. They're both leading very fantastic lives. But that's the thing that a lot of people that when they retire, they haven't thought that through, and if you had a tendency to have those types of bouts of depression, it can get really exacerbated in retirement. So I definitely urge your your audience, to listen about that.

Zandra Polard 18:16
You know, I was wondering, I'm not very familiar, and I don't know if you know, but can you retire and then decide, well, think I want to go back to work now. Will that disrupt your benefit? Or

Rick Morton 18:30
it's something I've looked at closely, because I know there's a line and we've got a little bit of a buffer zone, but, but less than that, I can't stand to be bored. I'm writing a book. Actually, I'm writing two different books right now about education. About education, trying to see what does it take to be an effective teacher. And so that's something that I'm putting in. And so I'm going to retire, and then I'm going to put myself to work. Yeah, I want to go back and do lecture series. I want to come and work with the schools and try to train teachers on how to get through it's a tough job. Oh, yeah, you know. And not just because the kids are exhausting, yeah, but they're not. They respect people, no, you know. And that's the thing is that I, you know, in in coaching, I used to tell students, especially when I coached football, I love attitude. I want passion. Attitude. When you get mad and you're out there on a sports field, it tells me you care about something. I hate apathy. I love attitude. I can't stand disrespect. That might be that military piece of me, you know. And so we try to find that line where you're getting the most out of what you're doing, you're passionate about what you believe, and you couldn't do this job if you weren't passionate about what you're doing, not to the I mean, I see the focus and the gift that you have, and so I try to pass that on to my students, but I want to be able to put a system in place where it's constantly passed on to them. So that's what I hope to do in retirement. I'm not going to just stop doing anything. Look at your favorite people, you know. I mean, did Maya Angelou retire? Right? Look at Jimmy Carter, 100 years old. That man, I don't know if he was a good president. I think maybe that, you know, there were better presidents. That man was one of the most real people, hard working, God fearing, you know, benefactors to our country for way longer than he was in office. So that's what I hope to do. Do a little bit of good work when it's all over, have a little fun. Go Travel the world. Play a little poker. I love I love poker. Okay, and so

Zandra Polard 20:31
do you play poker? Like when my husband has poker on the TV and they're flipping the chips and making all this noise, I

Rick Morton 20:38
can do a couple things with chips. I'm not. I don't have the dexterity.

Zandra Polard 20:44
Well, I digress. Let's get back into retirement. Sure. So love the plan. Love that. Okay, you mentioned there was a buffer, so you didn't quite explain. What is that buffer? You've retired, and you say, Hey, I'm bored. I need something to do. I need to do. I need to get back into the workforce. Can you and if so, when you

Rick Morton 21:06
know? And here's the thing, one of the best piece of information I ever got, or piece of advice I got was from a university professor realizing I went back to school in my 40s to get a teaching license. I didn't have a degree before that. He said, Why would you do things for one reason, if you could do it for three I love writing. Why shouldn't I write that can help other people? So I love to write it do something for me. It helps other people. Why not also find a way to publish it and make a couple of bucks if you can. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think that that's an evil and so. So yeah, the buffer zone just comes from the idea of, I know what it would take for us to retire if we just wanted to sit and watch TV. It would take a lot less, because we're probably not going to live as long if you're not getting out and doing things. I know what it would take to just be extravagant and just spend it all in the first five years. And so the buffer zone comes in to say, Okay, we want that 80% lifestyle we want to do will do most of what we want to do and live, hopefully, most of what we'd like to live in into the future. We both have decided that don't resuscitate me if it gets close to the end. You know, we don't want to be a burden to anyone. Does that make sense? And so that's a personal decision people to make. But, you know, the idea is just to know what you want, so you gotta start writing it out. Yeah, put it on paper. You know the idea that, you know, most people who get the most out of life, they wrote it down bucket list. Have you heard of Yes,

Zandra Polard 22:36
yes, and I always speak about the importance of journaling, getting those thoughts on paper,

Rick Morton 22:43
absolutely? Yeah, I tell people that all the time, write it down. People don't know how amazing their stories are. Like, if you put that on paper, you know, you don't want to type it, that's fine. Voice to text is amazing. Now, yes, right, and so, but there's a lot out there that that we could learn from people who are, you know, maybe not in the workforce anymore, but they're not gone, and there's so much we could learn.

Zandra Polard 23:07
But I My question was more technical, like, if you retire, you can retire and you want to go back to work, you can go back to work a year later.

Rick Morton 23:18
Yeah, in PERS, which is the state program, yeah, Public Employees Retirement System. Basically, the idea is they don't care. You could do whatever you want. You're always going to collect your PERS Social Security. Though, if you're on a PERS system, my understanding is, and we've looked into it a bit, you got to watch what you make that first few years, until you get over 70. If you make a certain amount, then they lessen your Social Security check.

Zandra Polard 23:44
Okay, yeah, that's what we got to make sure you're aware of

Rick Morton 23:47
those types of things. You know, I'm very happy to be in the per system, but I have other things going beyond that, because when I married really well, she makes a lot more money. But so if you can do that, I highly suggest, yeah, someone that's cute and they make more money

Zandra Polard 24:05
than you all right, then,

Rick Morton 24:08
but yeah, that's, that's the thing is that you know, just a lot to think about. Don't leave the thinking to yourself. Find a professional talk about it with your significant other, to your family. We talk to our kids about it all the time, and just, you know, don't leave it to chance. Don't leave it to the last second. So

Zandra Polard 24:23
do you think part of the planning is having a conversation with the children? Or

Rick Morton 24:28
I know for us, it was for sure. I mean, you know, we've got four kids, two of them from my first marriage, two from from my wife and I live 33 years, and the boys are in their 30s, okay? Blended family. The girls are in their 40s, and so it's like one of the things we talked about took a while. They all four have an ease in distribution. There's no, you know, figuring out who's been family longer, or that kind of thing for us, that's what works. But, you know, so there's, again, they absolutely, you. Know, there's a lot of complications when we're gone. If you're suddenly just gone, the both of us, you know, I don't, we didn't want to leave anything a chance. So we've already taken care of all of our death, you know, like we're going to be made into trees. They're going to cremate us, and then they present my family with two trees where our ashes, I guess, are part of the you know, plant that someplace, but

Zandra Polard 25:22
when you retire, you're not dead. But this is another plan. That is another

Rick Morton 25:26
part of the plan. Don't wait, don't don't put it on don't put it on them. That's the thing. And then make sure that your financial house is in order, because

Zandra Polard 25:34
you're inevitable, where you're gonna be, and it's such an emotional conversation for some people can be Yeah, and that doesn't help,

Rick Morton 25:45
no, but it's good to know that there. You know, I mean, love is, is, is, is an important part of the equation, for sure, yes, and I'm very blessed that way. My wife and I are very happy, and

Zandra Polard 25:58
love is important, but business is too businesses, and we know that this is a business that absolutely you will tend to at some point in your life. Yes, so I was just glad you brought that up. Well, don't mean to end on such a down note. Let's, let's give them something upbeat to talk about, okay, to think about. You

Rick Morton 26:19
want me to pull something out? Yeah, I love to write, and I do this writing challenge now called the New York City midnight, NYC midnight. And so basically, and I've introduced my kids to it. Now I've got another adults to do it. It's basically the idea of every couple of months of the different challenge, the poetry challenge, the 100 word microfiction 250 word. I'm currently doing a 2500 word short story, and so that makes me more alive, I think, than much anything else I do. I love the coaching. I've backed away from that. I don't coach now. I love teaching. Pretty soon, two years, I'm not going to be teaching one on one with students or a group of 20. You can always write, yeah, you know, and that's what I would encourage people to do. It has given me such joy over the years, and it's shown me more about myself. My one of my professors told me years ago, you don't know what you really think about something until you sit down and write about it. Then, because nobody else is around to play it around, that you've got to decide what you're actually meant to say right there. So write it down often, he said, and then, and then talk to someone. Could clarify, but write that's what I would ask people to do. Get your journal. I love that you said that. You know, journal is so important, reflection

Zandra Polard 27:33
Absolutely. Well. Thank you, Rick Morton for coming on this show has been amazing. It's where I am is on 91.5 jazz and more every Saturday morning at 7:30am and if you've missed any portion of this broadcast, it is available on all major podcast platforms until next time, have a great one. Bye. You.