If you’ve ever seen the 2007 film The Bucket List, you probably remember that it’s about a couple of terminally ill but amazingly energetic old guys (played by Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) who set out to complete a mutual bucket list—the things they want to do before they die. They drive race cars, fly over the North Pole, visit the Taj Mahal, and ride motorcycles across the Great Wall of China. 

It is easy to forget, though, that the real message of the movie is summed up by one item on their list: Help a complete stranger for the good. That’s what each man does for the other in the few months they share.

The movie popularized the bucket list idea. But the concept that it should include more than exotic trips and adventures seems to have gotten lost along the way. One survey found that 95 percent of Americans have bucket lists and that the most common goals involve travel. The website bucketlist.org says that the most popular goals today include swimming with dolphins, bungee jumping, and visiting a volcano. 

There’s nothing wrong with taking a nice trip or seeking a few thrills—especially if you have the money to do it and you pick experiences that matter to you—rather than those that made the latest list of 1,000 things to do and places to see before you die. 

But here is a question to ask yourself: If you never swim with dolphins, will you regret it on your deathbed?

“None of us know when our time is going to be up,” says Dorian Mintzer, a Brookline, Massachusetts, psychologist who works as a transition and retirement coach and is the author of The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle: 10 Must-Have Conversations for Creating an Amazing New Life Together. 

Mintzer urges her clients to really consider the lives they want to live and the legacies they want to leave behind. That is the path, she says, to building a better bucket list.

Make It Meaningful

In theory, “a bucket list is a great idea,” says Jim Emerman, vice president of encore.org, a nonprofit organization that focuses on intergenerational connection and helps older adults find meaningful second-act roles in the nonprofit world. 

“It’s really important for people to think about what they want to do with the years they have left and what they want to leave as their legacy, for their family, and more broadly than that,” says Emerman. 

But “a lot of people don’t think it through,” he says. “They tend to go to the usual: ‘Where haven’t I been, and what haven’t I seen?’”

So, what might be on a more meaningful bucket list?

For some people, the answers include nurturing relationships with big gestures like reuniting with an estranged sibling or small daily acts such as handholding walks with a spouse or storytime dates with a grandchild. Some lists might include spiritual or intellectual quests, from reconnecting with a childhood faith to learning a new language to spending more time in museums, libraries, and symphony halls. And many people who want to leave a better world will commit to more acts of kindness, giving, and service. They’ll find ways, Emerson says, to combine the things they enjoy doing with activities that lift up their families, communities, and humanity at large. 

“Ultimately, these are things that will change your life more than any trip,” says Erica Brown, director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership and an associate professor at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 

Brown, who is the author of Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death, recommends that people considering a bucket list try what might seem like a morbid exercise: writing their own obituaries. Better yet, she says, write one that would run if you died tomorrow and one that could run if you died many years from now.

“It’s a humbling experience that helps you think about how you want to be remembered,” Brown says. Many high achievers may find themselves pondering what The New York Times columnist David Brooks calls résumé virtues and eulogy virtues, she adds. 

In a 2015 column, Brooks wrote: “The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral—whether you were kind, brave, honest, or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?”

Brown also says that it’s important to actually go to funerals, both for the solace you offer others and for your own good. 

“No one goes to a funeral and doesn’t think about their own death,” she says. “It does sober us up and makes us think, ‘One day someone is going to stand there and talk about me.’”

If you do not like what your mourners might hear, she says, your bucket list is a chance to do something about it. 

Creating the List

Asking yourself a few key questions just might help you come up with a bucket list that will “give more meaning and depth to your life,” Mintzer says. It may well include travel and adventure, but might also include new commitments to mentorship, charity, and other forms of service. 

It’s really important for people to think about what they want to do with the years they have left and what they want to leave as their legacy, for their family, and more broadly than that.

Jim Emerman

Brown says she has listened to recordings of many deathbed conversations and is struck by one thing. When people express regrets, they are almost always about relationships—the people they lost touch with, the thanks they never gave, the forgiveness they never sought. Avoiding those regrets should be the starting point for any bucket list, she says.

British psychologist Philippa Perry put it this way in an interview with The Guardian newspaper: “What we should be doing in our bucket lists is learning how to be open with our own vulnerabilities so that we can form connections with other human beings … We don’t all like swimming with dolphins, but we are all made to connect to each other. That’s the really fun thing to do before you die.” 

Go-To Gurus

With more than 40 years’ experience at her craft, psychologist and author Dorian Mintzer presents at a number of local, national, and international events and conferences each year, speaking on retirement transition issues. In her book The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle: 10 Must-Have Conversations for Creating an Amazing New Life Together, she shares smart, practical advice, engaging anecdotes, and helpful exercises. 

Dr. Erica Brown is an accomplished author specializing in books about leadership, the Hebrew Bible, and spirituality. Brown has degrees from Yeshiva University, the University of London, Harvard University, and Baltimore Hebrew University. Her book Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death was one of two of her 12 books to win the Wilbur and Nautilus awards for spiritual writing. 

Today’s healthy retirees may live 25 years or more beyond their primary working years. That’s a lot of years. But more importantly, that’s a lot of days—more than 9,000 days to wake up, greet the dawn, and then . . . What?

Maybe you picture days filled with tennis, boating, reading, travel, volunteer work, or a part-time job. You may imagine spending time with your spouse, friends, grandchildren, or new acquaintances who share your pastimes.

But what if you did more than just imagine—and gave your retirement at least as much consideration as a new car? In other words, what if you took your retirement plans for a test-drive? 

Kevin Deiters, 60, of Austin, Texas, has done something like that twice in the past decade, when he voluntarily left jobs and took several months off, knowing he would return to work eventually. During those career breaks, he says, he learned how important it was to have a sense of purpose. In his case, that included increasing his volunteer work with the National Forest Service and a trail-building group. 

“The thing with having a regular job is that you are kind of on autopilot,” says Deiters, who is now executive director for the Texas state pension system for volunteer firefighters. 

When you get a taste of retirement, you learn that “you have to get up and plan each day,” he says. “You need something to belong to, something to do.” 

It’s a lesson more of us might learn if we took off a few weeks or even a few months to wake up each day and live like retirees—and find out just how much mileage we really might get out of our plans (and our budgets). But retirement experts say that if you can’t do that, it’s still possible to test-drive aspects of retirement.

The goal: to avoid the scenario that executive coach Marilyn Bushey, of Dallas, says she heard about from one client. The man’s father always said that when he retired, “he was going to go fishing every day,” says Bushey, who, with fellow coach Gail McDonald, is the co-author of a book called Retirement Your Way. “When he actually retired, he went fishing three times the first week, two times the second week, and then he never went fishing again.”

If the fishing enthusiast had test-driven his boat-based lifestyle, he would have learned that he needed a bigger retirement plan. Many people do, experts say. 

I ask people all the time, ‘What are you going to do in retirement?’ and they say, ‘We’re going to golf, we’re going to travel,’ and I tell them that’s not going to be enough.

Steven Morton, a CAPTRUST financial advisor in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Morton says he has not had any clients who took significant time off work to test-drive their plans. “In the real world, it’s very difficult to take a sabbatical,” he says. 

Patrice Jenkins, a retirement consultant and author of What Will I Do All Day?, says many people, especially those in corporate jobs, are hesitant to “show their cards” while plotting career exits because they fear they will be sidelined prematurely.

But those concerns should not stop anyone from test-driving aspects of their retirement plans, she and other planning experts say.

“I advise a modular approach,” says Joe Casey, a coach at Retirement Wisdom in Princeton, New Jersey. “Start to look at the different parts of your life that are most important … and find ways to test those.”

Here are a few common retirement goals and how you might test them out.

Making a Big Move

One of the biggest mistakes new retirees make is immediately selling their home and buying one in a new community, says Seattle-based career and retirement coach Robin Ryan, author of Retirement Reinvention. Too many end up isolated and unhappy in a place that’s not right for them, she says.

The best way to avoid that mistake is to rent for at least a few months in your target location, she says. You could do that during a sabbatical or other career break. 

Another option: living part time in a new locale while starting to scale back on your career. 

That’s what Jenkins, 61, and her husband, a 68-year-old veterinarian, have done. They own one home in the rural area where he continues to practice part time and another in downtown Saratoga Springs, New York. They rented before they bought in their new neighborhood. 

If you can’t manage a months-long rental, you should at least spend a week or two in your prospective location “not in vacation mode,” Casey says.

Check out the medical facilities, educational facilities. Spend time talking to the locals. Really get a sense of what a week would be like, what a day would be like, if you were living there. 

Joe Casey

If you are thinking of living somewhere year-round, visit that spot year-round. If it’s a tourist spot, visit at busy and less busy times.

“Some people will find that places that they really liked when they visited as a tourist are a lot more boring when they go there not in vacation mode,” Casey says. 

Something you don’t notice or don’t mind as a tourist can turn into a deal-breaker when you are a resident. Morton says he knew one man “who always wanted to retire next to the beach.” So he bought some property and, while he was having a house built, rented nearby. “What he discovered was that he had to wash sand out of his sheets every night—and he hated it,” Morton says. When the new house was finished, the man sold it and moved elsewhere. 

Devoting Yourself to a Favorite Activity

You may think you will never get too much golf or tennis. But most people do find “that playing endless rounds of golf every day gets really boring,” Morton says. And there are other realities that might become apparent during a long-enough retirement test-drive. 

“The truth is that your body is not going to allow you to play golf every day or play tennis seven days a week,” Ryan says.

Maybe you think you would take up some new hobby. Even if you can’t take a lot of time off to explore your interests, it’s a great idea to experiment while you are still working, experts say. You may find a new passion, or you may find disappointment.

That’s what happened to Bushey, who is 72 and working fewer hours than she used to. “I thought I might like to build kaleidoscopes in my retirement,” she says, so she signed up for a kaleidoscope-building class. “I found out that I didn’t like to use a soldering iron,” she says. “So instead of building them, I started a collection.” 

Jenkins had a similar experience with pottery-making. “I took a couple of lessons and found out that it’s really hard and that I’m not passionate about it,” she says. Jenkins adds the caveat “that sometimes you have to give something time to find out whether you might become passionate about it.” Think about what “your future self” might like, she suggests.

Jenkins says, with that in mind, she might give pottery another try someday—but now she knows it won’t be easy. 

Spending Time with Your Spouse or Friends 

“Work has all this built-in socialization,” Jenkins notes. In retirement, maintaining relationships and social ties can take a new level of effort. And the effort may need to start at home. 

Retiring couples may find they have differing plans, interests, and expectations. A retirement test-drive period is a good time to work on reconnecting, Ryan says.

“Develop a couple’s activity you can do together,” she says, even if it’s as simple as going to dinner and a movie together once a week. And talk about how much time you expect to spend together. 

What about friends? 

One thing many younger retirees or test-drivers discover is that they struggle to find golf, hiking, or card buddies on a random Wednesday morning. And the last thing they want to do is to check out the local senior center—which many perceive, rightly, as geared toward much older folks.

Robin Ryan

The solution, Ryan says, is to become an organizer. So, if you have some time off, “host a poker game or a new book club,” she says. “Invite people you know and invite new friends.” 

Also, reconsider groups you may have overlooked in the past. Ryan says she’s found that her local Rotary Club is a great place to make social connections. 

Going Back to School

Many retirees are eager to learn, and options abound. You can take courses online or in person, for credit or not, for new career skills, or just for fun. If you are thinking of investing in an advanced degree or any other option that will require a lot of time and money, it’s a good idea to test yourself first, Ryan says. The best way to do that, she says, is to audit one or more college courses. You can often do it free or for a minimal fee, especially if you are over age 60. Rules vary state to state.

Though auditing students do not get credit, “you should buy the books and do the work,” Ryan says, to see if the rigors of academia are a good fit for you at this life stage. 

Leading for a Good Cause

Hard-driving careerists often see retirement as a chance to use their leadership skills for the greater good. That’s a wonderful thing, Morton says, but too many people end up charging into situations that are not good fits. In his book, Ten Common Mistakes Retirees Make, Morton says that the best way to test your fit is to work in the organization’s trenches. 

So, before you start a new chapter of Habitat for Humanity and promise to build 200 houses in six months, he writes, “why not be one of the rank-and-file [volunteers] and drive 200 nails? By then, you’ll know whether you really want to be involved in Habitat for Humanity for the rest of your life, or whether it was an idea that didn’t quite pan
out … The best advice: Try before you buy.” 

It’s June 2008. Tom Forst, a regional vice president at Cox Communications Group, is about to walk away from 25 years as a corporate suit to chase a lifelong passion. The dream to be a full-time musician had been on hold since his post-college touring days, circa 1974.

He recalls the exact moment his life changed course. “My wife was sitting in the living room. She pays the bills, and she said, ‘Look at that, I’m paying our last two $30,000 college tuition bills for our last two kids.’ I looked at her and said, ‘I’m going to quit.’”

“My wife simply said, ‘Go ahead,’ and that’s kind of the way she is. Her attitude was, what’s the worst that can happen?” She only wanted assurances they wouldn’t starve.

So Forst, then 57, gave his six-month notice at Cox Communications. At the end of that year, he stepped away from legions of direct reports, the jet-setting lifestyle, power, prestige, and pay. Big pay. What followed is a wild ride of a second act—from boardroom to bandstand, Forst was on his way to be a successful indie blues musician.

Now 69, Forst, known as The Suit, has gained acclaim as a guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter performing and recording with well-known musicians from the Johnny Winter Band and Saturday Night Live Band to the Allman Brothers Band, Paul Nelson Band, Stephen Colbert Show Band, and Grammy-winning artists and producers.

He has played hundreds of live shows and toured China as the headliner with a Chinese-American blues band. In 2018, he was inducted into the Connecticut and New York chapters of the Blues Hall of Fame.

In February 2020, he released his second album, followed by a sold-out release party at a Hartford, Connecticut, blues hot spot. When he isn’t performing, teaching a guitar master class, writing new music, or recording, Forst hosts a weekly podcast, Chasing the Blues. The postponement of his second China tour due to the coronavirus outbreak opens up creative space to produce yet another album in 2020.

It’s an aggressive schedule, and Forst thrives on it.

Follow the journey, and it’s clear that the leap from media executive to music was not as rash as it might sound. It was actually the next step in a plan that had been set in motion nearly a half-century earlier and driven with intention for a quarter-century.

The Early Days

Forst didn’t always cotton to the guitar. When he was eight years old, his parents offered him the choice to take up an instrument, with the proviso that if he did, he couldn’t quit. “It seemed like the guitar was the way to go, because, you know, Elvis.”

“I hated it, I just hated it,” Forst recalls. He admits to flinging the guitar out a second-story window at one point. “But my parents wouldn’t let me quit.”

The elder Forsts were on to something. By 13, Forst had landed paying gigs. By 15, he was invited to teach guitar at a local music store.
He recalls sneaking into clubs and even playing a strip club at age 16. All through college, music helped make tuition money. A week after graduation, Forst was in a band that hit the road. “In those days, around ’74, you could make good money doing that,” he says. 

After two years as a musical nomad, Forst changed course. He got a Master of Science degree in education. He taught first grade for five years, then changed course again. “I realized there was no money in teaching, so I went into the business world.”

In the next 25 years, he would get an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Connecticut and advance to regional vice president at Cox in Atlanta, overseeing advertising sales operations across the country. 

But Forst never stopped playing whenever he could.

Working for The Man 

“Everyone wants to hear I really hated working for The Man,” Forst says. He enjoyed his job, but clearly, for Forst, the dream of being a musician never flagged. 

“I had always planned to go back into the music business, but I had a family—and I had wants and needs myself that music wasn’t going to support. I said: OK, I can put it off as long as I need to.”

Forst would do what it took to advance his earning power, and frugality would channel those earnings into freedom reserves.

“There’s luck in there, for sure, but I kind of made my own luck. I knew I needed an MBA to get up to the next step. The sooner I could get to that next step, the sooner I could make the choice to leave. An MBA takes two years out of your life. Every night, you come home from work, you’re going to work until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, but I just did it. Yes, it’s inconvenient, but so is being broke,” says Forst. 

“People who make a good amount of money also spend a good amount of money,” he says. “They get the big McMansion, the really top-of-the-line car, and all that. I never did that. We got a really nice farmhouse, and I drove a Ford, then a Prius for my last couple of years. I wanted to have freedom more than I wanted any kind of status. Even if I didn’t want to be a musician, I wanted the freedom to make a choice.”

Building a New Career

When it finally happened, chasing the dream was a stark change. At Cox, Forst was a prominent executive with 1,000 people reporting to him. In New York City, he was just another musician going from audition to audition.

He had given up a lot, says Forst. “The first-class life, the limos waiting—you can really get caught up in it. The transition was tough. It was the loss of some status, the loss of some security, because I really did give up a ton of money to do this. I felt a little guilty about it, because I still have a family, and I could have made a ton more money.”

Then there were the travails of building a new career. Even though Forst was an accomplished musician, he had to build his name almost from scratch, because he’d been out of the scene for 30 years. And music can be a young person’s game. He admits to being self-conscious about his age at first.

“One time I auditioned in this place in the middle of New York City, and there were about 50 guitar players. They all looked like my kids, the perfect rock stars. I’m 57, standing there in my short hair, and I’m thinking, ‘This is going to be brutal.’” To Forst’s disbelief, he got the gig, playing in a hip-hop band of 20-somethings.

It didn’t always go so well, he explains. “Sometimes I auditioned for things and was told, ‘You’re a little too old for the person we want.’ As I gained self-confidence, now my age is a benefit. I see myself kind of as a mentor.” His young audiences are sometimes dumbfounded when he talks about listening to this kind of music in the 1960s, decades before they were born. But he relishes it. “Now I want my age.”

If the Suit Fits

Shortly after Forst left Cox, his son, Michael, then 22, was keyboard player and leader of a hardcore punk band. Michael invited his dad to a gig in Brooklyn at a good-sized venue filled with young people, none older than 25. Michael had planned a surprise.

“He said, ‘You just sit in the front row. We’re not going to say anything. I’m going to set up your guitar and amp, and I’ll give you the nod.’ Finally, Michael calls me upstage. The punk rockers are in red long johns with the flap in the back. And there I am on the edge of the stage with a blue blazer, gray wool slacks, and penny loafers. The audience is staring at me,” recalls Forst.

“Then Michael gives me the nod where I’m supposed to do the lead, and I do, and the place is just shocked. You wouldn’t expect a guy who looks like me to do what I did.”

As the band moved on to the next song, somebody started to yell, ‘Suit, suit,’ and then the whole audience started to yell, ‘Suit, suit, suit.’ Michael turned to me and said, ‘I guess that’s your new name.’

Tom Forst

Known thereafter as The Suit, Forst hasn’t entirely given up his corporate persona. He has grown a neat beard and traded the executive haircut for shoulder-length waves. He still dons a jacket everywhere he goes—some with elaborate embroidery, others more subtle and classic, but always with panache.

“The stage is a temple in a way. When I get up on stage, you’re never going to see me in ripped jeans and an old shirt. I think that’s disrespectful to the art. So it’s not quite a suit, but I always wear nice jackets,” says Forst. 

He has had some good-natured differences of opinion with Factory Underground, his label, that wants him to adopt a more stereotypical blues image­—more ragged. “Just last week, I said to them, what you don’t understand about me is that I’m a very neat person. I like to have every hair in place, my beard has to be trimmed, I wear well-fitting clothes. I’m not going to look like the guy who just stepped out of a weeklong binge.”

For his latest video, they compromised on a brooding Johnny Cash-style look. Black hat, plain black denim suit, black Chuck Taylors. It works.

Bona Fide Blues Guitarist 

On Valentine’s Day 2020, Forst released his second album, World of Broken Hearts—a five-song extended play record, or EP—of Forst originals and a unique cover of “Hoochie Coochie Man,” originally recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954.

“EPs can feel like speed dating,” wrote Steven Ovadia in a review for American Blues Scene. “Artists are trying to get across their essence in a few pithy moments. It’s not just a hard thing to do, it’s arguably impossible. Yet Forst has managed it here, wisely selecting strong songs that, while thematically similar, also spotlight his range. Also helping things are stellar performances, all of it making you grateful that Forst traded his suits for a guitar.”

Ovadia praises Forst’s “soulfully worn voice, huge rock grooves, and thoughtfully layered tracks.” Another reviewer characterizes Forst’s style as “a force of nature controlled with journeyman precision.”

“I definitely poured my heart out into the album,” Forst said. “It took more than a year to put it together. The whole album is about relationships, the idea that no matter how bad it is or was, the sun is still going to shine the next day, and we just have to realize this is what happens in life, and you can’t be surprised. This is what happens, and deal with it.”

The haunting video for “Late Night Train,” the first track on the EP, puts a modern-day take on the classic blues train theme, updated to the streets of Harlem and the New York City subway. The video went viral, garnering more than 225,000 views in the first 30 days and landing on YouTube’s recommended list.

Magic Inside the Music

“People who know my story will say to me all the time, ‘Wow, what a wonderful thing; you’re living the dream.’ I want to say, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ You’ve got to be realistic. I don’t wake up every day and go, ‘Oh, you know, it’s the dream.’ I wake up every day happy that I’ve got another job that I really, really like. Music is a business like anything else.”

“I always knew it would be difficult. In the music business, people aren’t quite the same; they’re loosey-goosey on things. Some days get frustrating. I still have not calmed down in that area,” says Forst. Will the musicians arrive an hour late? Will the show get a good audience? Will the sound man say there’s not enough room for the equipment? Will audiences like the new music? 

According to Forst, while work and worry surround the halcyon moments of actually making music, he says that to him, “There’s a magic inside the music. It’s not just the music, it’s how you approach it and the dynamics. Music is about emotion. You have to know how to sell it, and that’s how I approach it every minute.”

There’s a magic inside the music. It’s not just the music, it’s how you approach it and the dynamics. Music is about emotion. You have to know how to sell it, and that’s how I approach it every minute.

Tom Forst

In the opening to the Chasing the Blues podcast, Forst quips that he sold his soul to the devil to become a corporate executive, then quit it all to play the blues.

“Not my soundest financial decision, as you can imagine, but I am working as hard on this as I possibly can, and I’m enjoying every second of it. I live every note that I play and breathe every lyric that I write. To have others be touched by my music is the ultimate reward.” 

Tom FORST: Snapshot of a Music Man

Rolling out two albums of rocking blues tunes in three years is something to boast about. Tom The Suit Forst’s collection includes the 2017 album On Fire, perfectly sized with just under 45 minutes of soulful music and featuring 11 songs. The Suit also released a second album, World of Broken Hearts, on Valentine’s Day 2020. The five-song EP features harmonic rock grooves with cozy rhythm, and, of course, a healthy dose of blues.

His unique story, which has been chronicled by Forbes Magazine, television news programs, radio, and newspapers, includes the two aforementioned albums, touring China, and induction into the New York and Connecticut Blues Hall of Fame. The weekly podcast he started in 2018, Chasing the Blues, just completed its 50th episode, the finale of its first season. The podcast, endorsed by the Blues Foundation, explores the history and impact of the blues as world music and features interviews with other blues artists such as Mike Zito, Anthony Gomes, and Joe Louis Walker.

Imagine 10 or 20 years from now, telling our grandchildren and great-grandchildren about the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. What will we say?

For many of us, we will first think of the great tragedy.

We will recall the trauma and mourn the loss of life. We will remember how we faced the burdens of being separated from loved ones and, for some, isolated entirely from the outside world. We will grieve the long-anticipated milestones that will never be reached and the embrace of those lost forever. 

Some of us will share an Orwellian version, one of partisan divides and conspiracy theories, fake news, and shifting predictions. We could speak of stranded travelers, dystopian policies, and standing in seemingly endless lines because each person had to be six feet apart. We could tell how every day brought some new anxiety-provoking development—how people worried about themselves, their families, and their livelihoods.

Those lucky enough to emerge on the other side of this crisis emotionally and physically intact might share the silver-lining version. They could say that 2020 was the year we met the unique character Joe Exotic, rediscovered sidewalk chalk, vegetable gardening, home-baked bread, and family dinners at home. 

We will tell them about drive-in church services, livestreamed concerts, virtual happy hours via Zoom and FaceTime, and the previously absurd prospect of doing corporate work at home in pajamas for weeks on end. We will tell them about teacher car parades, virtual proms, and teddy bear window scavenger hunts.

Whichever version becomes most pronounced in our memories, what is certain is that we will not soon forget the year of COVID-19. In fact, many of us are just beginning to grapple with the challenges of an uninvited new normal. 

Alone, Together

Measures to suppress the spread of coronavirus profoundly changed our lives—in ways good and bad. For many of us, stay-at-home orders gave us back our commute time. Gone were the distractions of group activities. Gifts of newfound time offered the freedom to plant a garden, read those books on the nightstand, explore hobbies, study a language, or learn to play banjo.

That freedom also marked the loss of the in-person communion of school or work environments—and of life rituals such as graduations and weddings.

“The comfort, predictability, and familiarity of my routine is gone due to the pandemic,” wrote human resources consultant Kevin Yates in a recent LinkedIn essay. “I used to travel to our offices in Menlo Park, New York City, and Austin. Hugs, handshakes, and fist bumps were how we’d greet each other.” 

“We worked shoulder to shoulder in conference rooms. We ate lunch together and talked about our families, our projects, or whatever came up in conversation. We laughed together. We brainstormed together. We looked for answers to the hard stuff together. I don’t do any of that now,” Yates wrote during the initial outbreak. “The bond and connection I had through physical proximity is gone due to the pandemic. No, I’m not okay.”

Humans are social creatures. We need that bond even more in times of duress. “At a moment of profound dread and uncertainty, people are being cut off from soothing human contact,” wrote Ed Yong, a staff science writer at The Atlantic. “Hugs, handshakes, and other social rituals are now tinged with danger.”

Humans Are Wonderfully Adaptive

“People are reaching out to form new types of social bonds across the divide of spaces,” said Caela O’Connell, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “A lot of those ways are digital, which of course has limitations. A virtual hug doesn’t have the same warmth and biofeedback of an actual hug, but it goes a long way compared to no hug at all.”

As COVID-19 locked down travel and in-person gatherings, we adopted visual remote tools to work and socialize. “Rather than ‘social distancing,’ we should be framing this as physical distancing that includes a lot of social connection,” explains O’Connell. 

Rather than ‘social distancing,’ we should be framing this as physical distancing that includes a lot of social connection.

Caela O’Connell

Will we see a wholesale shift to remote work? Not necessarily. Some love it, while others confirmed that they never want to work from home again. Granted, a pandemic is not an ideal time to assess the options, said O’Connell. 

“None of this was a very good natural experiment for what working at home actually entails,” says O’Connell. “As parents, we are trying to provide childcare while doing our jobs, and our jobs are not the same as they were. The dynamic acrobatics of this is like extreme parenting and extreme working, not a good example of the work-at-home experience.”

Extreme Parenting: K-12 Edition

With schools closed, K-12 students became home-based learners. Parents became educators and facilitators—roles for which most had little preparation.

“The burden right now on parents with school-age children is a very high one,” said O’Connell, who was homeschooled until college and is working from home with her three-year-old son, who is home from his shuttered preschool. “Parents are trying to replicate a formal model from traditional education institutions, yet the actual practice of homeschooling is very different.”

“There’s a subtle expectation that parents must find creative ways to handle this on their own,” says Chloë Cooney, writer and advocate for global health and human issues. “My inbox, social media feeds, and countertops are filled with creative ideas for educating and caring for your kids.” 

“Workbooks, games, creative projects and experiments, virtual yoga, virtual doodling, virtual zoo visits, virtual everything,” says Cooney. “I honestly am too tired and stretched thin to read the suggestions, let alone try them. The few I have tried have been met with astounding and fierce rejection by my son.”

Businesses Pivot and Press On

After only four weeks under restrictions, small businesses were already struggling with the economic impacts. By late March, one-third of businesses surveyed by the news site WalletHub had already laid off workers, and another 36 percent planned to do so, while 35 percent feared the closure of their businesses.

Others pivoted on what they do best and adapted to a new order.

For example, IL Palio, a AAA Four Diamond restaurant, offered patrons the option to cook alongside executive chef Adam Rose from the comfort of their kitchen. The Chapel Hill, North Carolina, landmark is offering meal kits and a live, online class with Rose, as well as curbside pickup from a special dinner takeout menu.

Closed as nonessential businesses, local day spas are teaming up with their nearby wedding and event venues to host American Red Cross blood drives. And with grocery store shelves stripped nearly bare of meat, bars and restaurants across the country became grocers, offering produce, bread, meat, canned goods, wine, cases of beer, toilet paper, and other disposables—some with free local delivery to seniors.

Silver Linings

The pandemic response—and the surreal slowdown of life as we know it—produced some positive side effects. Time opened up for idle conversation, neighborhood strolls, and quieter living, at least for those of us not working in essential services. Families are playing backyard games instead of dashing to organized practices and leagues. People are making art, music, and memories. 

In urban areas around the world, air pollution is measurably reduced. People in the northern Indian state of Punjab are in awe of the sight of the Himalayan mountain range, now visible from more than 100 miles away for the first time in decades. 

And with no tourists around, animals at the shuttered Yosemite National Park are making the most of the extra space. CNN Travel reported bears have been spotted out and about at Yosemite a lot more frequently than would be considered typical for this time of year. 

The Ironic Benefits of Epidemics

“The effects of epidemics extend beyond the moments in which they occur,” wrote Katherine A. Foss, author of the forthcoming book Constructing an Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory.

“Crisis sparks action and response. Many infrastructure improvements and healthy behaviors we consider normal today are the result of past health campaigns that responded to devastating outbreaks,” writes Foss. 

For example, thanks to epidemics of tuberculosis, typhoid, and cholera in the 1800s and early 1900s, we no longer spit in public places, leave deceased cart horses in the streets, or empty chamber pots out of windows. Just as the effects of September 11 are so embedded in our lives that we scarcely recall the previous normal, COVID-19 will transform our culture and practices.

An Optimistic Perspective

As we all navigate this extraordinary human moment together, musician Lukas Nelson put his Facebook page to work spreading hope and good vibes. He features Plant a Seed days, solicits fans’ stories about what makes them smile, and hosts regular “Quarantunes” jam sessions and upbeat talks with his famous dad, Willie.

“At the very least in these troubled days, the quality time spent with family has been a great blessing,” Nelson posted. “These are some of the most important times in our lives, and we would never have stopped to really soak them in were we not forced to.”

Nelson’s points resonate. People of every age should take this time to cultivate the garden that is family and friends and the budding joy those people bring. 

Savor the moments we have together today. Take care to see the lessons behind every new challenge. Use the opportunities set in front of you to find new forms of gratitude and perhaps even an inner strength not yet discovered. 

In this issue, VESTED explores what opportunities a holiday from required minimum distributions presents to retirees in 2020, a few planning ideas to consider during market declines, and what readers should know about their chances of getting audited by the Internal Revenue Service. 

Q: I’ve heard that I am not required to make withdrawals from my retirement account this year. Why is that, and what does this mean for me? 

A: You’re probably referring to a provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that’s been in the news. The CARES Act is the $2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March to help alleviate financial pressures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This provision waives required minimum distributions (RMDs) from defined contribution plans, including 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b) plans, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for calendar year 2020. This waiver also includes RMDs from both inherited Roth and traditional IRAs. 

RMDs are Internal Revenue Service-mandated distributions from retirement accounts for people 72 and older. The starting age for RMDs was raised from 70 1/2 to 72 thanks to the SECURE Act, a piece of legislation that passed in late 2019. Regardless, the IRS rules require withdrawals based upon life expectancy to ensure that these accounts are depleted as the account holder ages. The distributions are taxable as ordinary income.

The good news is that, at least for 2020, if you don’t need money from your retirement account, you aren’t required to take a withdrawal—and won’t incur taxes on the withdrawal amount. If you are set up on a monthly distribution schedule, you may want to stop or reduce your payments so that you won’t owe unnecessary taxes.

As always, new tax rules create tax-planning opportunities.

Here are few quick examples:

In both cases, there are finer point, caveats, and restrictions to consider. These things can get confusing quickly, but the tax planning opportunities can be meaningful and might be something you want to consider.

New tax rules—even temporary ones—take time to digest and often require further clarification from the IRS. That’s certainly the case here. That’s just one more reason to make sure that you speak with your tax and financial advisors and view these opportunities through the lens of your unique financial situation.

Q: What kind of financial planning decisions should I be thinking about with the markets down? 

A: It is normal to worry about personal finances after a sudden downturn in the market. Volatile markets are never easy to endure, but expecting volatility and putting a sound financial strategy in place is the best defense when things get rocky. Part of coping with market volatility is taking advantage of market downturns, because they can also create opportunity.

Understanding that every investor’s financial situation is unique, we firmly believe that the best strategy for most is to stay the course. But there are a few silver linings to stock market declines that are worth commenting on. 

• Tax loss harvesting. The practice of selling an investment for a loss, tax loss harvesting is a strategy that takes advantage of temporary declines in taxable investment accounts to offset future tax liabilities. By realizing—or harvesting—a loss, investors can offset taxes on gains. When clients have significant financial life events that create capital gains, such as the sale of a business or appreciated property, tax loss harvesting can be particularly beneficial.
• Rebalancing. An investment account’s asset allocation can be distorted by sharp moves in financial markets like the ones we have seen over the past few months. Periodic rebalancing during these declines provides an opportunity to get an account back on its target asset allocation—selling outperforming asset classes to buy underperforming asset classes—and add to solid, long-term investments that are trading at discounts to recent prices.
• Roth conversion. The recent market decline also makes now a good time to consider converting a portion of a traditional individual retirement account (IRA) to a Roth account to take advantage of benefits, including tax-free income and no required minimum distribution. While you will pay taxes on the converted amount, lower account values mean that you can convert a larger portion of your account for the same tax amount to take advantage of the eventual market rebound.

While market declines are not something anyone looks forward to, a few smart moves when they happen can make a positive difference for long-term investors. Every investor’s situation is unique, so you’ll want to discuss these or any other planning ideas you are considering with your tax and financial advisors. 

Q: Are some tax returns more likely to be audited than others? What happens if I get audited?

A: Being an honest taxpayer might not be enough to protect you from an audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Several factors can lead the IRS to single out your return for an audit, including having higher income. Even if you follow all the rules, a return reporting income of $200,000 or more has an increased chance of getting flagged. The same goes for taxpayers who are self-employed or run cash-intensive businesses. The IRS may also pay more attention to professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants, who often run their own businesses and do their own bookkeeping.

Since 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, most people take the standard deduction. However, if you are one of the few people still itemizing and your medical and dental expenses, taxes, charitable contributions, and miscellaneous deductions are greater than the statistical average, you might want to arm yourself with information so you understand what the audit process is all about, why your return could be audited, and what your rights and responsibilities are. 

You can either agree or disagree with the auditor’s findings. If you agree, you’ll complete some paperwork and pay what’s owed (and maybe some penalties and interest). 

If you disagree with the auditor, the issues in question can be reviewed informally with the auditor’s supervisor, or you can appeal to the IRS Appeals Office, which is independent of the local office that conducted the audit. You can appeal the auditor’s findings by sending a protest letter to the IRS within 30 days of receiving the audit report. If you do not reach an agreement with the appeals officer (or you do not wish to use the appeals office), you may be able to take your case to the U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, or U.S. District Court where you live.

First and foremost, you can help protect yourself against an IRS audit by ensuring that your tax return is not missing required schedules or forms, that your records clearly substantiate the items claimed on your return, and that your return is not signed by a preparer associated with problems in the past.

If you’re not yet ready to get back into group exercise, you can still embark on a fitness journey that will take you places and open amazing vistas within yourself, sans the membership fee, group exercise, or even stepping off your property. 

“The wisdom of yoga teaches us to accept the reality of the moment and do the best you can to deal with the situation,” says master teacher Krishan Verma, a yoga practitioner for more than 50 years and founder of the Sri Sri Yoga Teacher Training program in Québec City, Canada. “Yoga can be helpful for anyone, regardless of their age, health condition, or religion.” 

This gentle but powerful exercise is growing in popularity, with one in seven Americans now practicing yoga, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

No Pain, Lots of Gain

Part of yoga’s unique appeal is how little it demands. Unlike spin classes, CrossFit, or Tabata, yoga requires no pain, sweat, or tears. There is no leaderboard in yoga, no winners or losers, and never a need to step on a scale. The perfect activity for introverts, yoga does not pressure you to measure up to any standard—or even leave the house. Yoga only asks that you remove all judgment and be present in the moment. An antidote to a competitive society, yoga teaches that simply spending time on your mat, at home, is the perfect way to join this 5,000-year-old tradition. 

“Yoga means union. It is time to connect and unite, something that we may have neglected previously because of our busy lives,” says Verma. “Use this time wisely. Learn new things. Stay connected with people.”

While this form of movement is perhaps best known for improving flexibility and balance, the physical and mental benefits of yoga actually go much further, as a slew of scientific research reveals. 

Yoga brings out the power that lies in passivity and sitting with your breath. The ultimate low-impact exercise, yoga is, surprisingly, as protective of heart health as much more strenuous forms of exercise. Those who practice regularly can experience weight loss, reduced blood pressure, and lowered cholesterol counts, according to a study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 

Researchers found that yoga practitioners exhibited more vitality, better sleep patterns, and less depression in a meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. There’s also strong evidence that yoga can relieve chronic low back pain, according to a review in the Clinical Journal of Pain. Other research suggests yoga can relieve some chronic illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, and others, just as well as pharmaceuticals—but without the side effects.

There’s also good news for the more than half of U.S. seniors who struggle with various forms of chronic pain. Yoga can soothe their suffering while helping them avoid the dangers of opioid painkillers. Scientists have learned that longtime sufferers of chronic pain experience physical alterations to the neural circuitry of the brain, and these changes can cause drugs to lose effectiveness. But mind-body practices like yoga appear to protect against, and even undo, these neurodegenerative effects, according to research from the National Institutes of Health. 

One of the most fascinating scientific discoveries about yoga has to do with its ability to keep the brain youthful and positive. An anti-aging effect was observed after just eight weeks of a mindfulness stress reduction program. While it’s a normal part of aging for the brain to shrink and lose some gray matter, researchers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were able to see that practitioners of yoga retained more of their brain volume. Their brains were more similar to those of much younger people.

Interestingly, this protective effect was found to be more pronounced on the left brain, which is the side that is associated with joy and relaxation. “Years of yoga experience correlated mostly with GM [gray matter] differences in the left hemisphere … suggesting that yoga tunes the brain toward a parasympathetically driven mode and positive states,” researchers wrote in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 

This happy phenomenon may help explain why two-thirds of yoga students and 85 percent of yoga teachers who initially are attracted to yoga’s many physical benefits so often end up exploring the practice’s deeper dimensions. “Most initiate yoga practice for exercise and stress relief, but for many, spirituality becomes their primary reason for maintaining practice,” according to a study published in the Journal of Health Psychology in 2016. 

Body, Breath, Mind, and Spirit

“Yoga is good for the well-being of all layers of our existence—that is, body, breath, mind, and spirit,” says Verma. “The wellness of each layer affects the wellness of the other layers. For that reason, yoga teachers talk about mind and spirit. Also, many yoga students want to know more about themselves and are very interested in spirituality. Yoga provides answers to their questions and provides a spiritual path for them to learn and understand more about themselves.” 

Breath is life, says a Sanskrit proverb popular among yogis. From a scientific point of view, the type of mindful breathing known as pranayama can trigger the body’s relaxation response, signaling the parasympathetic nervous system to slow the heart rate, soothe digestion, and reduce stress levels. 

Do you want to experience these benefits, but you’re worried you’re not fit or flexible enough for yoga? There’s no such thing. An easy path for beginners is restorative yoga, a meditative and relaxing style based on yoga that emphasizes passive stretching and long-held poses. The gentle work of restorative yoga poses can lower cortisol levels, relieve pain and anxiety, and assist with weight loss.

Restorative yoga helps counter the hectic forces of modern life with stillness and breathing. While seated or lying down, you move through a restorative yoga sequence of five or six poses, such as gentle twists, reclining poses, or forward bends. For example, you might lie with your legs up against the wall or sit on the floor folding over your legs, perhaps supported by a yoga block or folded blanket. For five or 10 minutes, you remain in the posture, focusing on your breath, gradually allowing gravity and the weight of your own body to take you deeper. Without conscious effort, you’ll notice your mind calming and tense muscles releasing. 

As your at-home yoga practice becomes a consistent part of your daily routine, you may begin to notice small changes. You might feel more flexible, or you may be more at ease when picking things up or bending over. Perhaps you’ll develop a habit of simply noticing when negative emotions rise and start to accept them and let them go without judgment. You may find space in formerly tight joints and tendons, as well as more capacity in your mind and spirit. These are signs that you are reaping the benefits of yoga, in being present to yourself and the ones around you. 

Vacationers often pick up a French or Mandarin phrase book to prepare for a trip overseas, but did you know that the benefits of language study go far beyond being able to order a croque monsieur at a café or ask for directions to the Forbidden City? Language learning is a wonderful pursuit for brain health, with some scientific research suggesting that studying languages can help build up the brain’s cognitive reserve—a complex neural network that accumulates over a lifetime and makes the brain more resilient in the face of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, or other ravages of time.¹ And, according to PBS NewsHour, bilingualism is a better hobby than sudoku puzzles when it comes to keeping your cognitive skills in tip-top shape for a lifetime.

VESTED reached out to London-based language expert Olly Richards to hear his take on the benefits of bilingualism and how best to go about acquiring a new language. 

Richards is founder of I Will Teach You a Language books, courses, and podcasts, and is a self-taught polyglot who speaks an astonishing eight languages—Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese—many of which he learned while traveling or living abroad. 

Richards has always been drawn to languages through his love for different cultures. At age 19, working in a London cafe, he practiced French and Italian in order to be able to chat with the many interesting people he met. Later, he spent time in Argentina, Brazil, France, and Japan, all the while forcing himself to find more efficient ways to quickly improve his conversational abilities without too much hard studying. He also learned Spanish, Portuguese, and Cantonese—the last being a language that he shares with his Hong Kong-born, UK-raised wife, Connie, and their bilingual four-year-old daughter, Elina. 

He has observed that each new language he studies brings out a different side of his personality. “In Brazilian Portuguese, I’m very outgoing. In Japanese, I’m more timid and deferential. In Spanish, I’m direct, bordering on what would be considered rude in English.”

Richards’s teaching methods are a far cry from the rote memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules that you may have dreaded in high school. Instead, he relies heavily on stories, which he calls the most basic and human form of communication. 

“When you’re learning through a story, you’re not just memorizing a list of words. From the ancient cave paintings to the Bible and the Koran to the stories our mothers read to us at bedtime when we were kids, stories immerse you in the language,” says Richards. 

Students don’t always have the option to live in a foreign country, but spending time with stories is a fun and natural way to absorb new words and phrases, and it mimics the experience of language immersion.

Being Bilingual Has Benefits

Many of Richards’s students pursue language study for both pleasure and brain agility. “A lot of people want to keep their brain sharp,” he says, and that “they may be worried that their memory is getting worse.” 

Learning multiple languages can boost thinking, processing, and executive function. Research in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology found that speaking more than one language on a regular basis improved verbal abilities and processing speed in older adults. 

More benefits found by the National Center for Biotechnology Information tell us that bilingualism could delay the onset of dementia by between four and five-and-a-half years. On top of that, positive effects for cognition, including reading, attention, focus, and fluency, were discovered even among people who learned their second languages later in life, and stronger benefits were seen with those who acquired three languages, according to the American Neurological Association. 

Richards’s own view is that studying a second language pushes you into unfamiliar territory, forcing you to use trial and error to reach the next level of understanding. “One of the more important tools is making mistakes,” says Richards. “Viewed through the lens of brain health and cognitive ability, progress always lies just on the other side of your comfort zone.” 

Confidence Is Key

At university, Richards trained as a musician, studying jazz and improvisation. His musical sensibilities inform his view on achieving fluency in a second language. Musicians must do their daily drills to free themselves up for creative expression. 

“As a musician, you practice your scales every day because you need to keep your chops up and your hands nimble. When it’s time to perform, you’re not thinking about it, you’re improvising from the heart,” says Richards. 

With language study, “the equivalent is getting a daily dose of exposure to the language, so your brain stays tuned in to the language,” he says. 

Communicating with a native speaker requires putting performance anxiety aside and presenting yourself more confidently than you may feel. “When you’re face to face, people look at your eyes, demeanor, and smile. They aren’t focused on your mistakes, but on whether you’re a friendly person that they want to talk to,” says Richards.

Read, Hear, and Speak the Target Language

Richards says the goal is to consume as much spoken and written material as possible in your target language so you’ll absorb it naturally. “If you give your brain a chance, by spending time with your language every day, it will do much of the work for you without your being conscious of it.” 

Some language students watch movies, but he doesn’t advise that. “They’re too long and are at native-speaker level. You want something bite-sized.” 

The best study materials are stories that are just a bit beyond your current level of comprehension, so you’ll stretch without getting discouraged. Listening while reading is highly recommended. “My Short Stories books all come with audio books, so you can read along to the story and listen at the same time. When you hear the words that you see, it sticks in your mind and helps fill in your gaps in understanding,” says Richards. 

Finally, leap into live conversation as soon as you can. Don’t wait out of shyness or nervousness. “The psychology is, they’re terrified of speaking with a native speaker because they think, ‘I’m going to make mistakes.’ But the day never comes when you’re completely confident,” he says.

So find a safe person—a teacher, language partner, or friend with whom you’ll feel it’s OK to make mistakes. “This is the only way to become fluent and to speak confidently in a language,” says Richards. 

It may feel awkward at first as you fumble to find and create the Spanish or Italian version of yourself. But Richards says that after you’ve had a hundred conversations in Spanish or Italian, you won’t be nervous anymore. “So go ahead and start one hundred conversations with that safe person.” Then, one day, when you do meet a native speaker, you’ll feel more than ready to improvise from the heart. 

Olly Richards: An Expert in Language Education
Olly Richards started learning his first foreign language at the age of 19. Today, Richards speaks eight languages fluently. A few of the tongues this seasoned polyglot has learned include Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Cantonese, and German. He is known for teaching students the secrets to learning foreign languages quickly by using an innovative story-based method that puts the fun back into learning. His work includes producing more than 30 language books and courses across a variety of media with the goal of helping other people elevate their thinking about language learning for maximum results in a minimum amount of time.

¹ Godman, Heidi “Can I Bank Cognition Now for Old Age?” health.usnews.com, 2018

If recent capital market volatility and constant onslaught of negative news has you feeling financially uncomfortable, you’re not alone. In times of crisis, many people feel that they should take drastic action in response to the barrage of information about market turmoil or unexpected geopolitical events. 

This is a natural response, but it’s not wise to react based upon emotion.

Research shows that taking—or at least considering—thoughtful action can help you feel like you’ve regained some control. To get started, here is a list of actions and opportunities you may want to consider and discuss with your financial advisor:

1. Revisit your financial plan and your time horizon for accomplishing financial goals. 
2. Confirm that your cash positions are safe, and your emergency funds are sufficient. 
3. Confirm equity investments aren’t needed immediately and that they are longer-term investments.
4. Revisit your fixed and discretionary living expenses. What has decreased, increased, or stayed the same?
5. Readdress any investment strategy or portfolio rebalancing changes you were considering.
6. Confirm your 401(k) and other retirement contributions are appropriate. This is an effective way to dollar cost average into the markets.
7. Check if there are tax-loss harvesting opportunities in your portfolio to offset current or future capital gains.
8. If you’ve considered a Roth IRA conversion, market pullbacks are a good time to revisit those plans.
9. Check your family’s healthcare proxies, living wills, and other advanced directives to ensure they are appropriate.
10. Take inventory of your important documents to be sure that you and your loved ones know where they are saved, preferably with electronic access to digital copies.

It can be tough to keep cool when you see the market dropping or to control your exuberance when you see it shooting upward. The simple fact is that market volatility is a part of investing, and we can count on market swings to challenge our patience as investors. So it’s important to keep a long-term perspective. Overreacting to market movements or trying to time the market by guessing its short-term direction is risky and may negatively affect your long-term portfolio performance. Don’t panic, stick to the plan, stay invested, tune out the noise, and focus on the long term. Your sound investment strategy should carry you through market ups and downs.

A couple of years after Sheryl Lynn and Curtis Johnson sent their younger son off to college, they had a slightly awkward phone conversation with him.

“Connor called and said, ‘I think I’m going to come home for spring break,’” Curtis recalls. “But we had to tell him, ‘No, you’re not.’”

It turns out that Connor had forgotten a small detail: His parents had recently sold the family home in Moorpark, California, and moved into a recreational vehicle on a nearby avocado ranch they’d purchased years earlier. Curtis, 59, an executive pastor at a large church, and Sheryl Lynn, 56, a Realtor, ended up living in that RV for more than two years while building their new dream home there.

In other words, once they had an empty nest, they flew out of it themselves—and into a new phase of life.

“We didn’t sit around and mope,” Curtis says. While the couple loved raising their sons, now ages 28 and 25, they were excited to “pursue the things we wanted to pursue,” he says.

Not everyone leaps into the empty nest years with such gusto. Many shed at least a few tears when their last child leaves home. Some struggle with the adjustment. Still, experts say full-blown empty nest syndrome—characterized by depression, loneliness, and yearning for the lost joys of the child-rearing years—is more a media invention than a widespread reality.

Another common belief is that marriages fall apart after kids leave home.

It’s true that some do. But studies show that couples who stay together actually tend to get happier once they have the house to themselves.

Still, happy or sad, the transition is big. And, experts say, it pays to do some planning and soul-searching before the day you find yourself sitting in a quiet house and wondering, “What’s next?”

Time for You to Take a Back Seat

More than a decade ago, Natalie Caine went to a meeting at her daughter’s high school. The headmaster wanted parents to think about the fact that they “were all about to become empty nesters,” Caine said.

That reality knocked her back on her heels. “I turned around to my friends and said, ‘If I start a support group, will you come?’”

Caine, 68, who trained as a speech therapist, has since made a new career of helping others manage life transitions. She speaks about the challenges and joys of empty nesting at spas, corporate retreats, and other settings.

Along the way, she’s learned that most parents still in the thick of carpooling, curfews, and family vacations are not very focused on what comes next. But they should be, she says, especially as children move through high school.

Among the essential tasks, she says, is starting to let go. “It’s time for you to begin to take a back seat,” she says. “Let your child lead more.” That means cheering them on and offering support, rather than telling them what to do. It means commiserating, rather than criticizing, when they make mistakes.

Equally essential, she says, is to think about “what matters to you now,” and to prepare for new possibilities.

Susan Gross, a career coach and human resource manager who lives in Cape Coral, Florida, agrees: “Wouldn’t it be beautiful if parents would take a minute to say, ‘Life is about to get crazy. What am I doing to prepare myself?’”

Gross, 58, who is the mother of sons ages 24 and 26, is the co-author of a book of advice and personal stories called The Empty Nest Companion. She says she was not prepared when her first son left for college.

“I fell apart dropping off my child” at a college just a few miles from home, she says. She remembers thinking, “Life will never be the same; this is the beginning of the end.”

But what if “never the same” isn’t so bad? Gross and her co-author, Briget Bishop, 62, a professional life coach who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, agree with Caine that the best way to deal with change is to embrace it.

Do you have a social life built around kids’ activities? Maybe it’s time to make some new friends. Do you have a job you kept because the hours worked with parenting? Maybe you could think about a new career. Did you leave the workforce? Maybe it’s time to get some training and jump back in. Have you let physical fitness, old hobbies, or spiritual practices fall away in the chaos of family life?

Guess what? You are about to have another chance.

“It’s a chance to explore parts of you that went dormant,” Caine says.

What About Your Marriage?

One of the things that can go dormant, especially in our kid-centric times, is marital bliss. While it’s true that most marriages improve once the kids move along, the years when your children are in high school are prime time for assessing the state of your union, says Daniel Dashnaw, a marriage and family therapist with Couples Therapy, Inc., in Boston.

The key to navigating any predictable transition as a couple—whether it’s retirement or empty nesting—is talking about it for at least five years in advance, he says.

“You have to start envisioning everything, from what you will do to where you will live,” he says. Couples with a “shared dream,” vividly imagined, he says, are more likely to invest in making that dream a reality.

Of course, some couples will discover that they don’t share the same vision.

At that point, some “decide they will stay together for the sake of the kids, then get a divorce” once the kids leave home, Dashnaw says. But, he says, that strategy often backfires, because parents underestimate the effect a divorce has on grown children. Some come to believe “their whole childhood was a lie,” he says.

Dashnaw urges couples to work on their issues, to divorce only for “hard reasons,” and then to be honest with children, no matter what their ages are. He stresses that honesty does not mean using your grown children as sounding boards for your complaints about your spouse or ex-spouse.

For parents who make it through the transition, the key to reigniting or keeping the spark alive is novelty, Dashnaw says. “It’s very important to have novel experiences together,” he says, to build emotional bonds.

And the new experiences don’t have to be big exotic vacations or cross-country moves. “It can be trying miniature golf,” he says. “It can be going to a play if you always go to movies. It can be going to a rock concert if you usually go to symphonies.”

Caine agrees. She suggests couples explore a new neighborhood in their town or a new aisle in their favorite bookstore.

For Curtis and Sheryl Lynn Johnson, the couple who built a new home soon after their children moved out, part of the fun of the empty nest is the ability to take laid-back vacations with friends. For each of the past six years, they’ve headed out with another couple—CAPTRUST Financial Advisor Mark Davis and his wife, Tricia—for an autumn empty-nesters trip.

“We do what we like to do,” Curtis says. “We like to walk. We like to eat. We like to sleep. We like a nice glass of wine.”

And, yes, the couples do discuss their kids, Curtis and Sheryl Lynn say, but only for about one day out of the week.

Change Is Inevitable

An empty nest does not mean the end of the parent-offspring relationship, especially in our age of easy texting and cheap phone calls.

But it does change that relationship. Ideally, adult children become masters of their own lives, and parents take back seats. That can be tough at times, Gross says. Even today, she says, “I miss my daily routines of seeing my kids after school every day and knowing what they are doing.”

But it helps, she says, that her younger son often calls her on his way home from work and shares news about his brother. The brothers, both launched on careers, own a home together. It also helps, she says, that she’s made her own life in a new community, where she lives with her longtime partner, and has made new friends at her synagogue and elsewhere.

“Sometimes routines can be stifling,” she says. “As long as you understand that change is inevitable, you can navigate this in a positive and exciting way.”

Her co-author, Bishop, says she struggled after her two daughters, now in their early 30s, left home around the same time that her marriage fell apart. In an essay in the book, she remembers walking every Saturday morning with two friends going through similar issues: “We talked about our sadness and our difficult journey for the first two miles, then we turned around and took turns praying for one another during the second two miles.”

Today, Bishop is happily single and lives near both daughters, one of whom has two children. She has found purpose and meaning in her family life and volunteer work.Her message for anyone struggling with the empty nest: “You’re not done yet. There’s life out there, and you have to go get it.”

“To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul,” said 18th-century English poet Alfred Austin. He was a lover of nature and wise to the fact that growing your own food turns out to be wonderful for your health. With its many therapeutic benefits to the gardener in addition to supplying fresh and colorful produce, gardening is a double win.

Tending a vegetable garden is a prescription-free way to lower blood pressure, promote heart health, and reduce the risk of age-related memory loss, research from Good Housekeeping shows. Weeding and digging also burns lots of calories while exposing you to vitamin D-producing sunlight.

And, of course, gardeners are more apt to eat plenty of nutritious plant-based foods. 

A vegetable patch can be a very effective stress reliever. Gardeners who worked outdoors for 30 minutes were found to have brighter moods and lower levels of salivary cortisol—the stress hormone that contributes to belly fat—than those who relaxed by reading indoors for the same amount of time, according to a 2011 Dutch study in the Journal of Health Psychology.

Light gardening and yard work can keep you trim by burning about 330 calories per hour—that’s more than you’d burn while walking, bicycling, or doing a light workout with weights, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

Gardening can keep your mind sharper longer. In a 2006 Australian study of more than 2,800 people over age 60, daily gardening was associated with a 36 percent decrease in the risk of dementia. Getting your hands in the dirt regularly also exposes your immune system to healthy microorganisms, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Inspired to start your own garden? Spring is still a way off, but the frosty months ahead are the perfect time to make preparations for a vegetable and herb garden for when the first signs of spring appear. 

A rich resource for beginner gardeners is a local cooperative extension office, which provides information for homeowners about gardening basics and what grows well in their area. Each county in the U.S. has an extension office that works closely with experts from universities and helps provide information about gardening, agriculture, and pest control.

In most cases, you can find the phone number for your local county extension office in the government section of your phone book or by Googling your state name followed by “extension office.”

But no matter how you plan to get going on your garden plot, there are a few key things every aspiring vegetable gardener should consider.  

Select a Spot 

Inspect the sunny areas in your yard. Most leafy and root vegetables need six to eight hours of direct sunlight to thrive, while plants with fruits—like cucumbers and tomatoes—require eight to 10 hours. That’s because generating flowers, fruits, and seeds requires the plant to use more energy from sunlight.

You don’t need a big garden at first. “Start small, even as small as four feet by four feet,” says Lucy Bradley, professor of urban horticulture at North Carolina State University and extension specialist at North Carolina State Extension. It’s better to be successful with a small garden than to overextend. If you don’t have a yard, a few 12-inch pots on a deck are enough to provide a household with plenty of lettuce, carrots, radishes, and herbs for salads. You can expand the garden next year as you gain experience and confidence.

Gardens tend to do better on high ground where there is good air movement and less frost. Vegetables need an average of one inch of water per week, so choose a plot that’s convenient to a water source—that way you won’t have to drag a hose too far.

Decide What to Plant

Make a list of what you want to plant, noting the target planting date for each vegetable. “Grow what you and your family like to eat, what is hard to find, expensive to purchase, and what thrives in your climate and soil,” says Bradley. 

If you like making homemade pizza, plant heirloom tomatoes, basil, oregano, and peppers. Baby lettuces, dill, and cucumbers could go outside your back door, accessible for salads. Foodies might want to plant specialty vegetables like broccolini or bok choy that aren’t always available in stores. For yards with limited sun, stick to shade-tolerant options like broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce, spinach, beets, or carrots. 

Plan for a staggered harvest. Arugula and butter lettuce are fast-growing for early harvest. Kale and spinach are known as cut and come again vegetables, because you can snip some leaves and come back for more a few days later. Peas and green beans take time to ripen, though their flavor when you snack off the vine is bright and alive compared to store-bought ones. 

Consider adding some edible flowers to your garden like early American settlers did. Marigolds and chrysanthemums, in addition to being a treat for the eyes, provide a habitat for beneficial insects, enhancing pollination. Squash flowers are a delicious treat when battered and fried. Bright orange and red nasturtiums add a peppery punch to salads, plus they deter deer. Minced fresh flowers can be folded into cheese spreads, herb butters, or pancakes. 

Evaluate the Soil

The ideal soil holds air, water, and nutrients in a balance of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter. The easiest way to find out what kind of soil you have is to pick up a trowel’s worth and hold it in your hands. Rich, healthy soil is something you know when you feel it: It’s easy to dig and drains well.

A simple home soil test purchased from your local gardening store can help you identify your soil so you can improve it—whether it needs fertility, absorbency, or drainage. 

Or you may want to have your soil evaluated professionally by your local extension office. In most counties, you would simply dig up a few soil samples for testing and mail them in. In a few weeks, you’d receive an online report about the makeup of your soil, the pH level, nutrient content, and recommendations for lime or fertilizer to apply to fortify it.

You want soil that is dark, crumbly, and literally full of life. Based on region and climate, though, soil can be gritty, powdery, or sticky when wet. But if you’re working with the red clay of Georgia, the sandy clay of Texas, or the caliche of Arizona, it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to grow a healthy garden.

Keep in mind that using native plants from your region and climate will make your job easier, as these plants are likely well-adapted to the soil of your area.

Consider Raised Beds

If your soil isn’t the best, a raised-bed garden may be a good option. This method of gardening can help keep pathway weeds from your garden soil, prevent soil compaction, provide good drainage, extend the planting season, and serve as a barrier to pests such as slugs and snails.

“Raised beds are useful where the ground soil stays too moist for healthy roots or the soil is highly compacted or contaminated,” says Bradley. Raised beds can be fancy or simple, and they can be built from wood, stone, or any materials that haven’t been treated with chemicals, since those could leach into the soil. 

A common approach is to use stacked 2″ by 6″ boards joined in the corners by 4″ by 4″ posts. Another approach is to use concrete blocks. While less pleasing to the eye, they are inexpensive to source and easy to use. On the market are also prefab raised garden bed solutions, which are made from long-lasting polyethylene that is UV stabilized and food grade, so it will not leach undesirable chemicals into the soil or deteriorate from being outside in the elements. 

Start Seedlings Indoors

For a head start, you can start seedlings indoors while it’s still cold out. About six to eight weeks before the planting date, sow the seeds in containers of soil, following the packet directions. As a rule of thumb, plant the seeds two or three times as deep as the diameter of the seed, and cover lightly but firmly, making sure there is good contact with the soil.  

Cucumbers, for example, need soil temperatures of at least 60 degrees, but you can plant the seeds about one inch deep in cups or pots. Once they reach four inches in height, they’re ready for transplanting. Before moving seedlings, take a few days or a week to harden them to the weather by putting them outside for a few hours each day. The plants should be spaced two feet apart in rows that are four feet apart, or near a trellis so they can climb upward. 

After the danger of frost is past, you can plant the rest of your seeds and add small plants from garden centers, catalogs, or online. Staggering planting of, say, sections of lettuce, at one- to two-week intervals, sets you up for continual harvest later in the season. As you harvest a crop, you can replant that area. As you care for your green charges, you might find yourself so absorbed by their natural rhythms that time flies by unnoticed, worries fall away, and your heart rate slows. Between eating lots of fresh produce, spending more time in the sunshine, and getting regular exercise, don’t be surprised if your next medical checkup shows positive results.