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Episode #614 - How to Navigate Goals as Life Unfolds

THIS IS WEEK THREE OF A FOUR-WEEK SERIES ON BETTER RETIREMENT GOAL SETTING, PLUS ROGER CHATS WITH DR. BOBBY ABOUT THE COST-BENEFIT OF BUYING ORGANIC.

“I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.” - Bugs Bunny

Roger: Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean in and rock it. Hey, Roger Whitney here. Today is week three of a four week series on, better retirement goal setting. Last week we talked about setting agile retirement goals and setting up the conditions to discover what you want in this new phase of life. Today we're going to talk about: how do we navigate these goals as life unfolds? In addition to that, we're going to talk with Dr. Bobby in an energy segment. We're all working on trying to build energy to show up for our lives as we age. And one of the things you hear a lot about is organic food. So Dr. Bobby is going to put on a scientist hat and we're going to talk about whether it's worth eating organic or not. Interesting discussion. Now, how are these two things related? There is actually a common thread between navigating retirement goals and whether or not to eat organic. And that has to do with this concept called opportunity cost. So opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative that you choose not to do when making a choice, when you have multiple options. So it represents all those benefits you would have gotten if you had chosen differently. So in retirement goals, I'll use Sean and I as an example. So this last weekend, Spencer and his girlfriend came over and they spent the night because they were going to a wedding and it was just more convenient for him to be here. So we got to hang out with him. And then the next day, Emma and her fiance Bri came over and we watched a movie and they taught me how to play mock mahjong. Yes, I finally learned how to play mahjong. Makes my wife happy. And so it's fun to be able to play with them. That is really awesome to be able to do. But we have this house in Colorado and we're trying to spend more time there. And we're going back in January. I was there for five or six months this year. When we choose to be in Colorado, the opportunity cost of that is to be local and available for these random meetups with our children. There's a lot of benefit to that. I love hanging out with my kids. But when we're in Colorado, that's the opportunity cost. So there are these trade offs. So we see that in retirement goals. Well, if you're going to spend money on organic food, there's a trade off because that money could go to other things and that's where we're going to go with this conversation with Bobby. So that's what we got teed up for today.

ROGER ENCOURAGES REGISTRATION FOR HIS NEXT LIVE MEETUP AT LIVEWITHROGER.COM.

Roger: Before we get to how to navigate retirement goals, I want to encourage you to go to livewithroger.com and register for our online meetup on November 6th at 7:00 CST, where I'm going to hang out. We're going to talk about the Go-Go years and really defining what those mean and the importance of them, but also how to set better retirement goals. We'll have a chance to have some interaction and maybe learn a thing or two and improve our skills. And we're also going to have open enrollment for the Rock Retirement Club starting that day. It's the last chance to join this year, bringing in the fall cohort where you can get all the tools and the resources and community you need to really take your retirement planning to the next level.

ROGER REFLECTS ON SETTING GOALS THAT WILL ALIGN WITH THE CURRENT VERSION OF YOU AND ALSO WHO YOU ARE BECOMING.

Roger: So go ahead and sign up for that at livewithroger.com Last week, we talked about not spending so much time on defining what I want in the future, but how do I create goals to set the conditions to discover and explore life? Well, if we're going to do that, it's probably pretty important that we pay attention so we don't climb the wrong ladder and we don't create a life that actually isn't aligned, with who we are and who we are always becoming because we don't stay the same person. Sean and I just had our 35th anniversary, and I say this all the time. It's like, after 35 years, I was looking at old photos of her, and I. I'm a totally different guy, than I was in my 20s. I mean, I. Same thread of the character, hopefully. But my preferences are different. Everything's different. So she's been married to a lot of different guys. I'm just the same. A different version of the same guy. I guess there's a better way to say it. So we have to make sure our goals are relevant to who we are constantly becoming. And if you're married, you have two people that are becoming in different ways. That's important. So when we're setting retirement goals, we have to hold them lightly, acknowledging that they're going to change in a variety of ways that we can't foresee. And this is really overlooked in retirement planning conversations. And in the process, we set how much do you want to spend in retirement? We set a goal package, and then we get right down to all the volatility with the markets and the tax code and Potential risks like long term care, way out in the future. When we think of what we have to manage in retirement, those are usually the things that we think about. After decades of experience, I can tell you I believe that the goals that people have in their retirement are just as volatile, if not more volatile than markets and tax codes, etc.

ROGER EXPLORES HOW GOALS EVOLVE OVER TIME, THE BARRIERS THAT MAKE IT HARD TO RECOGNIZE AND ADAPT TO THOSE CHANGES, AND A SIMPLE PROTOCOL TO HELP ENSURE YOUR GOALS STAY ALIGNED WITH WHAT MATTERS MOST.

Roger: So I want to talk about how goals change, what the barriers are to identifying and adjusting to those changes. And then I'm going to suggest a protocol to make sure that your goals are congruent with what's most important to you. So that's the plan today. So let's talk about how volatile goals are. Well, first off, these are assumptions about the future with inflation and what we think we're going to spend. So one way goals are constantly changing is that inflation is acting on those goals. And sure we have an inflation assumption in a good retirement plan, but it's just an assumption. Each individual is going to have their own inflation rate based on their preferences and their flexibility to changing, you know, buying strip steak rather than filet. And there's an economic term for that I can't recall at the moment. So inflation is always going to make those goals different than what we're estimating. Plus we have to account for bad assumptions. I thought this is what it cost me to spend on my base great life in retirement, but it was an estimate. Now that I'm in retirement, I'm finding it's different. So we have bad assumptions that we got to keep getting more information on. And every year you live, you get one more year of data to inform making better estimates, especially in retirement, once you've actually retired. So we have to account for that. Another area that we have to account for are changing priorities.

PRIORITIES SHIFT OVER TIME AS WHAT ONCE MATTERED MAY LOSE IMPORTANCE AND NEW VALUES EMERGE.

Roger: So if we think of: we have in our base great life, some of those may move down to more discretionary wants over time. A good example is I have a client, in fact I'm going to go see her in a few weeks. That at one point in time the private country club was in her base great life estimate. And the reason was when she was that person, she golfed regularly. Her entire social network was in part of this community where she would eat there, she would play cards there, she would golf there, she would exercise there. That was extremely important to her. And over time that private country club became less important. She didn't spend as much time there and it became more of a discretionary expense rather than a non discretionary expense. So we can see things going from Base great life down to wants as we become the next version of ourselves. And conversely, we can see discretionary spending move up to base great life. One example of that might be concierge health or a trainer or a nutritionist. We may have that in our want category. But because of life circumstances or our focus, we realize having an athletic trainer is really non discretionary. It's too important to me now. So they may move back, they may move up into that base great life category. We need to recognize when these things are happening. Wants could go to wishes, wishes could go to wants, et cetera. Like, you know, a good wish that could go up to a wants that I see is gifting, whether to kids or the community. We usually put that in aspirational. But as their life circumstances change, we get more confident. Now that we're retired and we're okay and maybe the grandkids come, oftentimes I'll see that move from wishes up to a higher priority to wants. So we need to pay attention to this in some way.

Roger: Another way that goals can change, a third way is we may delete things or we may add things. What you thought you wanted and was important to you or was important to you at one point goes away. A good example would be when I was really into triathlon. It was all about the triathlon bike. It was about making sure I had access to a pool. All these things were very important to me at the time. Non discretionary, because I was in that mode. I don't have any of those things now because that season has ended. So I deleted them. And likewise, you could have things that come in that you're adding to your wants, your wishes, or even your base great life. Because of the time of season. Some people, it's pickleball now. They're all pickleball all the time. They got a pickleball coach, they're doing this, that and the other thing. They never would have imagined that even a year ago. So we need to pay attention to things that are moving in and out.

LIFE EVENTS LIKE HEALTH CHANGES, FAMILY NEEDS, OR LOSS CAN RAPIDLY REORDER GOALS.

Roger: Life circumstance. This stuff changes all the time. Then let's just look at two. Let's look at health challenges. Whether it's, you know, physically, you're starting to get arthritis, or perhaps it's disease or cancer, all sorts of things. And if you're married, it could be your spouses that might accelerate travel because you want to make sure you make hay while the sun shines, because you're starting to feel it. So it becomes more important in the future, going forward than you originally thought. Conversely, it could decrease travel because you're just not able to. You're in a season where it's not a high priority because you have other things going on. Increase in health care costs related to whatever health challenge you're dealing with or your spouse is dealing with. So life circumstance can change on a dime, and this can happen suddenly. And let's think about life circumstances relative to family, where it could be your children or your parents could use a helping hand and you're in a position to do it. And this becomes a priority either because it's thrust upon you because they don't have any other source, or you're choosing to speak into their life financially because that's what family does. That can happen on a dime. Just like grandkids can change what your priorities are. It could change where you live. In some cases, these things happen all the time. And obviously death of a spouse or a major illness of a spouse is going to change everything in terms of what's important to you from a goals perspective. And there's all flavors of these unexpected. This is why we need to make sure that whatever goals we set, that we don't continue to do all of our planning towards them because they made things that may not be relevant to who you are and what you want in your life. Every day is day one when it comes to goal setting, because you are a new version. And we need to make sure your plan is relevant to what's most important to you and where you want to go as of today. Not being trapped by who you were a year ago just because that person decided it and put it on paper. But we have to have a protocol for doing this. Now.

COMMON BARRIERS TO NOTICING CHANGE INCLUDE INATTENTION, SUNK COST FALLACY, AND SOCIAL PRESSURE.

Roger: There are some barriers to noticing and embracing these gradual and sometimes sudden changes into our goals. So what are those barriers? One is we just aren't paying attention. I call it building a cage. We organize our life, whether it's, where we live, how we live, what we do every day, and then we habitualize it and now we have these habits and we're just not paying attention. So we've essentially built a cage that we can't get out of or it's difficult to get out of. We bought the lake house because that version of us wanted that and it was really important. And we didn't recognize that it's giving us more burdens than pleasure. So we just always go to the lake house and we end up getting trapped by it rather than figuring out how, acknowledging, because we're paying attention that this isn't serving me anymore. So it's easy for that to happen.

The other thing that comes into play is just psychological, what's called sunk cost fallacy. This bias that we have, you know, this is. This manifests itself into finishing a terrible movie, right? You've already invested time in the movie, and you're a quarter of the way through it or, half of the way through it, and it's horrible. You're not enjoying it, but you feel obligated to finish it because you started it. Not addressing an unhealthy relationship, allowing it to go on, even though it's not serving you anymore. Investing, we see this all the time, right? Investing is, I bought this investment. It went down. I know that investment doesn't serve me anymore of, where I want to go because my goals have changed. But I can't get myself out of it because I can't lose money in it. I got to go. I got to wait for it to come back. And we end up getting stuck with it. Not realizing whatever resources you have on any day is really all the resources you have and the history should not overly influence today's decision.

This is actually a, little bit of a superpower of mine. I'm very good at not getting caught up in that. I say that, but I'm sure I have blind spots now in goals. It could be investing money and time in a goal. Let's say you're really into golfing. I had a client that was really into golfing, bought a bunch of equipment, was taking lessons, and then realized six, seven months later really wasn't that important. He was able to just, it's not my thing. I decided sold his golf clubs. So he lost the money that he put in the golf clubs, or at least a portion of it. He lost the time. And there's a lot of things that get into us that we want, you know, that don't allow us to do this. Well, they hate. We hate waste. We don't want to waste it. I bought those golf clubs and those lessons. I got to do it. Now. That seems wasteful. Just to stop loss aversion, social pressure, things like that. These are barriers to us noticing and then adjusting our goals. But the reality is every day is day one. So that now, next, how do we, one, pay attention to the changing seasons and relevancy of our goals? And number two, how do we lean into this fact and not get stuck in sunk cost fallacy and climbing up the wrong ladder, I think is Stephen Covey phrase. I don't have it totally figured out. But I think it's little conversations focused on the right things.

REGULAR REFLECTION HELPS KEEP GOALS ALIGNED WITH WHAT’S TRULY IMPORTANT.

Roger: So here's a protocol number one, stay centered or connected to what is actually important to you. We have to remind ourselves of these things. It's never just a one and done so in my world, this is going to be, have structured little conversations, you know, guided agile retirement management where in a systematic way you revisit from the beginning what's important to you. You don't have to do it every single time, but you want to have a reasonable cadence. I think once a year is fine. Twice a year if you're in more change, more changes going on in your life. And you would start literally at the beginning and focus on your values. These are what I said. These are the values that I choose to live to. How are my goals influencing them? And so when you're having this little conversation to evaluate your goals, let's say it's annually, you want to ask yourself some questions. What's different about my life, my relationships, my health, my interests? That's a good question to reflect on. Ask yourself second, Are these my goals or someone else's expectations of me? Revisit the challenge. These goals hold them up for examination. Third question. Would I set this goal again today? Fourth question. What was I really trying to achieve with this goal? A lot of times we'll attach our goal to a thing, not realizing that it's not the thing, it's what we wanted. It's never the thing. It's the thing about the thing. Rv.

I'll use it as an example. A lot of times when we buy in our. Well, a lot of times when we buy an rv, what we're really buying is the image that we have in our head of what it's giving us. It could be you or you and your spouse on the open road or your kids coming with you and sitting around the campfire and playing in the river or whatever it is. That's actually the motive driver to own things is the image that you have in your head. But we tend to attach it in marketing encourages this is that we attach it to the thing when if you want to have that vision of you and your spouse or you on your on the open road by yourself. It doesn't necessarily have to be in an rv. It could be in a rented rv, it could be in a car. There are other ways to get what you actually want. So ask yourself that question. Last question that you might want to consider. Am I willing to bet 1. Go. Go year on this goal or these goals? You know, if you're in your 60s, life is getting tighter. It's asymmetric. Those early years are important. You'll never get them back, and you're only as healthy as you'll ever be right now. Are you willing to bet one year pursuing the goals that you have set? These are some ways of looking at these goals in an organized way and challenging them. So you can acknowledge, yeah, I don't care about golf. I wouldn't set a golf goal anymore. And that can help get us over the fact that you spent money on golf course. You have to pivot. It's like changing a major. Don't create a cage for yourself. So that is how I would approach it. First, stay centered on, what's important to you and the season that you're in. And part of this is going to the balcony. And that's what these challenging questions do, is that we're in the mosh pit of our emotions. Having centered questions, even if you're talking with a friend about it, can help get you out of yourself and look at it with a different perspective. Revisit these. Hold them up for examination.

REVIEW SPENDING REGULARLY TO ENSURE IT REFLECTS YOUR CURRENT PRIORITIES.

Roger: Look at your base great life next. And you said that you were going to spend this much. Let's say it's $120,000 a year. What did you actually spend? What is estimated versus actual? We don't have to go down to the last decimal point on this. Just get a sense. If I spent 120, but it ended up being 125, that's probably within a, a range of reasonableness. But if you spent 130 or 40,000 on your base great life and you estimated 120, then dig deeper. Well, why was that? Did you have an unexpected large expense that you didn't account for? If not, then maybe you had a bad estimate and you need to revise that a little bit. And if it was that you had a large expense, then maybe you ask, well, will I always have these? Or was that really extraordinary? Look at your estimate to your reality. Where do you need to make adjustments or deletions on your wants? Estimates versus reality. I see this a lot with, goals like on Go Go spending or travel, we get really aspirational because it's a good exercise, I think. And then we put this number out there on, travel, and you realize you never actually spent that ever. And it's hard to even imagine we want to maybe revisit that. If your travel goal was below your estimate, ask the question, well, was that just because I had this other thing going on, but that was a one time event, so this goal is still relevant to me. Or if you're overspent on travel, again, similar like we did with the others. Well, maybe we just front loaded some things and I don't anticipate that going forward. It's okay. They're never going to be perfectly aligned your estimate to actual. But what we want to do is look at them. One, to look, identify trends of over or underspending because those could be problems long term and to determine are, these goals relevant to us. And this is the exercise that we want to do in a somewhat formal way so we don't shortchange it. And in the want category, because this is more discretionary, you want to think about, well, what's coming up in the next year or so. What do I need to think about in the next year? So, oh yeah, my daughter's getting married next year or I have my family reunion next year. What's coming up? I'm going to need a new bicycle. Things that maybe weren't caught because we're closing the aperture to look, you know, in an area that you can see next year or maybe even the year you can start to be more concrete of, oh yeah, I got this going on and I didn't really incorporate that. How am I going to pay for that? This is the kind of protocol you want to go through with your goals so they can be relevant to who you are because that's the only thing that matters. We don't want to climb up the wrong ladder. So hopefully that gave you some sense of how to navigate these things and realize that they're going to move all over the place. And this is just as volatile as the markets and they're actually even more important than the markets. Assuming you have a feasible plan of record and that that's resilient because this is your life. These are the things that you say you want to represent your life. So we want to make sure that they change as you do. All right, with that said, next week we're going to talk about a retirement goal case study. but for now let's go chat with Bobby about organic.

ROGER INTRODUCES DR. BOBBY TO TALK ABOUT ORGANIC FOODS.

Roger: So we're here with Dr. Bobby. How you doing, Bobby?

Dr. Bobby: I'm doing great. I feel fueled by good food and ready to discuss our topic.

Roger: We'll see about that. We'll see what kind of good food we're talking about. Longevity is like the it girl at the moment, especially with those in or near retirement, we're all focused on longevity. And all the, influencers are coming out of the woodworks talking about, you know, supplements, which we've talked about. One topic they talk about a lot is organic food. And I get these choices when I go to the grocery store. So what should I, how do I navigate this? And how did you navigate this for you, you and Gail?

Dr. Bobby: Well, how I think we should all navigate it might be a little bit different than how I navigate it with Gail. But, I can share that as well. You're absolutely right. Everywhere you turn you hear you should eat organic, you should get grass fed meat, free range chicken, wild caught fish, all of that. But it comes down to costs and benefits. And so that's the framework I think we should go through, which is what about the cost? How much are they than conventional? And more importantly, what about those benefits? And given, your audience, this is a perfect marriage of a health topic and a financial topic. Because as we'll get to, a lot of money goes towards organic out of our budget. Maybe there's a better way to spend that money or save. And it's a lot of money. We might be able to, retire even earlier by just making a wise choice. So this is a really important topic, as you can see. I'm jazzed.

Dr. Bobby: Yeah, this is, there's an interesting premise when it comes to organic that is never really mentioned, which is, the premise that how they used to do, it was better, which in some cases maybe it was, but it's not necessarily in all cases.

WHAT ARE ORGANIC FOODS?

Roger: All right, so where do we want to begin to explore this?

Dr. Bobby: Well, I think step one is to really figure out, you know, what are organic foods, what are we really talking about, and then dive into the costs and then get into what the potential benefits are and ultimately sum it up as an ROI and have the fun discussion around, is that the best use of our dollars. So organic foods basically means that when you grow them, you don't use synthetic fertilizer. Doesn't mean you don't use fertilizer, it doesn't mean you don't use pesticides, but they can't be synthesized. And the, you know, there are USDA regulations which are quite strict to get the label of organic. You know, it's, it's a, it's a bunch of, hoops you gotta jump through. And a lot of local farms that basically, you know, prepare farmers market vegetables which are quite safe and wonderful. They haven't gotten the label because there's a lot of hoops to jump through. So it comes down to ultimately, what do we get and what does it cost? people think by definition organic food has got to be safer. And chatting with some food folks, what I learned is quite interesting. Now if you go to Whole Foods and their turnover is very high, probably the organic food is just as fresh as the non organic. But if you go to your local market, not that many people buy all the organic stuff. So it sits on the shelf for a while. So it might be less fresh, might have other bugs on it because it's been sitting around. So again, organic food generally means it might not have pesticides. That doesn't necessarily mean it's ultimately safer.

Roger: So when we're talking about organic food, we're talking about not just vegetables and fruits, but meat as well, correct?

Dr. Bobby: Exactly.

Roger: Okay.

>> Roger Whitney: You know, and I use a bit of a broad brushstroke because the same people that are interested in the organically grown foods are also interested in the wild caught salmon and the grass fed beef and the chickens that are free range. So I kind of lump them all together.

Roger: I have two clients that I've had for a long time that are cattle ranchers out west Texas. They're two brothers, good old boys. They're both in their 60s, 70s, and we've had this chat about organic in terms of the cattle that they raise. And their opinion of it was they don't really care. They're like, yeah, we switched to organic this year because they lock in prices. So for them, for the ranchers or for the farmers, I imagine a lot of it is just economics. If they want to pay me more for that, I can switch over. They just run the costs and they're, you know, they're agnostic to it.

Dr. Bobby: Yeah, Gail wants to feed our chickens because they make eggs for us. Organic feed, bottom line is twice the cost. $17 a bag versus $34 a bag. So there is a real cost. Now when we get to, you know, what goes in our bodies, those costs are very high.

Roger: And so, so the next part, so we know what they are, it's really just simulated fertilizers and farming versus just the organic materials that would be. Is that essentially the difference?

>> Roger Whitney: That's right.

DR. BOBBY BREAKS DOWN THE COST OF ORGANIC FOOD.

Roger: Okay, do we want to go to cost next or we want to talk about the benefit risk?

>> Roger Whitney: No, I think we got to start with cost. We got to work through this step at a time. Cost benefit and then cost versus benefit.

Roger: Okay, so cost.

>> Roger Whitney: It's a real deal. So in the US, we spend about $1 trillion a year. Now that doesn't go, that doesn't include going to restaurants. That's about $3,000 a person. So if you have a family of four, it's a, your grocery bill is somewhere between 1,000 and $1,600 a month. So the base amount is a lot of money. So as all of our listeners, your listeners know, you know, they're putting budgets together, they kind of know what they're spending on food. What they may not know is that organic food round numbers cost 50% more and about 15% of all fruits and vegetables purchased in the US are in fact organic. Now there's been a lot of surveys by LendingTree and Consumer Reports that really do confirm it's about 50%. But of course I had to go to the market and do my field trip and you know, Fuji apples were $1.40 if they were conventional, $2.70 if they were organic all purpose flour. Because it isn't just those fruits and vegetables. It's the flour that, you know, you buy $3 versus $6 for a five pound bag. And grass fed beef, you know, $6 a pound versus nine if you get the grass fed version. Wild caught salmon versus farm raised, it's about $8 for the farm raised, about $17 for the wild caught. So it's thousands of dollars a year. And this number I think will surprise people. Well, go ahead.

Roger: So if we take that 30, $100 per person and if I were to eat organic, I'm like, I'm going all in on organic. It's going to be about 4,600, a little over $4,600. About 50% more.

>> Roger Whitney: That's exactly right. And if you're a family of four, not everybody is a family of four. That's close to $6,000 a year more for organic. Look, you want to buy organic, you want to spend the money, great. But, but that's a lot of money. And as your listeners know, if you added $6,000 to your Roth IRA at age 30, that's real money when it comes to retirement. I haven't done the actuarial assessment, but I suspect we're in the neighborhood of retiring a year earlier.

Roger: Potentially. Potentially.

>> Roger Whitney: We're, we're talking, this isn't just a theoretical, you know, woo woo discussion. It could change your life.

Roger: Well, and from a, let's assume, let's use that 6,000 extra just as a number a year, it could be added to an investment account. It could be money that isn't withdrawn from an IRA that is taxed. But let's keep it in the health bucket. Let's assume we determine we want to spend $600 extra a year, then it's, where is it best spent? And, you know, it could be organic food, or it could be go to the cost of a concierge doctor to help navigate care. Right. That's the opportunity cost, even if we keep it in the health bucket.

Dr. Bobby: Oh, absolutely. And I think after we get through the benefits, then we can pull it all together and say, do we save the money, Retire early? Are, there alternative uses for the dollars? And then is there a middle ground? Ground where, you know, we don't buy any organic. We don't buy exclusively organic. Is there something in the middle? And I think that's ultimately what the audience wants to know is, you know, how do I navigate here?

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF ORGANIC FOOD? IS IT WORTH THE COST?

Roger: Okay, so we got a good idea of cost. Is it worth it from a benefit perspective?

>> Roger Whitney: That is the real question. It's the $6,000 question, literally, which compounds over 20, 30 years. Okay, so what are the benefits? If you survey Americans and you say, well, what do you think about pesticides? You know, 85% of people say, well, that can't be good. We got to get rid of them. But the reality is, most fruits and vegetables really don't have pesticides at all, even if they're conventional. Yeah, some do, but in general, the levels are very low because the USDA worries about this. Now, where did the bad rap come from about, you know, the. The conventional food growing?

Roger: Well, you know, the. The first thing on pesticides that I think of when I hear that word is I'm from Michigan, is ddt, which.

>> Roger Whitney: Obviously is not around anymore. But now Roundup, of course, is the new one. Is the. Is the new one. So where did the bad rap come from? Look, I'm not suggesting everybody goes out and buys Roundup and drinks it, but where does a bad rap come from? Rodent studies, mice and, And. And rats. And they gave them huge amounts, and bad things happen, but that amount is not making it onto your fruits and vegetables. Okay, so what about in humans? Well, there are some data that suggests that being around pesticides is not good for you. You know, whether it's Alzheimer's disease, whether it's Parkinson's, cancer, fertility issues. But those are typically farm workers. They're spraying this stuff all day long. It gets on their clothes, they bring it home, and their kids are exposed to it. Again, way higher amounts of residue than, you know, normal people would get in their normal life. So yes, rodents and farm workers, there are diseases that we in fact do worry about. But then we got to get to the question like the rest of us, and there have been multiple meta analyses, summary of lots of studies, and they really haven't shown a clear health harm. And the vast majority of these are observational studies. So what that means is you ask people, well, do you eat organic? Do you not eat organic? What happens to you if you ate organic? And they found, ooh, the people who ate organic, their BMI is less, their weight is less, ooh, okay, I better eat organic. And ooh, what about rates of cancer? Oh, okay. But the reality is that people who are willing to spend money on organic are not a random sample of the US Population.

Roger: No, no, not at all.

>> Roger Whitney: They, they care about their health. So in addition they probably exercise more, they worry about sleep, they may not drink as much alcohol. So just comparing things observationally doesn't really tell us much. Now, there have been a small number of randomized trials. A randomized trial, you get one type of food, somebody else gets another type of food and we see what happens. It would be unethical to say, I'm randomizing you for the next 40 years.

Roger: Well, that's the thing is getting real data on this has to be really difficult because the time frame to get the data is not very feasible.

>> Roger Whitney: It isn't now. So what they've done is some really short term studies. They take people and say, okay, you've normally eaten organic apples. Okay, you on the other hand are normally eating non organic. You're just eating tomatoes, regular tomatoes, and they check the blood levels of pesticides and then they give them the alternative one and they can show there are small, small, small differences. The real issue is do those differences matter? And the answer is, for most all of these illnesses, there's no strong data to say it causes harm. Now there is some observational data on cancer and ultimately we're going to put together an ROI on this. But I don't believe the data. But if you did believe the data or the WHO summary of the data, something like that. Basically they've estimated that if 1,000 people eat organic, 13 of them might have cancer, get cancer. But if you then said, well, what if a thousand people ate conventional? Well, it would be 19 people, so 0.6% difference. So those 990 people would eat organic, get no benefit, so that a small number might get benefit. So keep that in mind, a thousand people, maybe six fewer cancers. Not cancer deaths, just cancers.

Roger: Right.

>> Roger Whitney: Because we're going to ultimately have a numerator and a denominator, and people will say, I have a choice to make.

ROGER ACKNOWLEDGES THAT SOME PEOPLE FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT BUYING ORGANIC AS A WAY TO TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR HEALTH.

Roger: Before we move on, let's address the reaction of this. Because people tend to be, you know, it's, it's like vegan or CrossFit. How do you know if somebody does CrossFit, they're going to tell you about it? People get very passionate about this stuff is really the point.

>> Roger Whitney: That's correct.

Roger: Hearing this, how does that get. I just want to acknowledge that some people are probably a little passionate. Like Bobby, Dude, I have 100 different studies or articles. Where are you coming from on, this in terms of you thinking about it for yourself? Is it as a scientist? Is that what your, your attempt is here? Just to really objectively try to look at it rather than get around? Because there's so much marketing around this too?

>> Roger Whitney: Yeah, it's a huge issue. And with so many areas of health, religion, and I don't mean religion as in going to church, but there is a religious belief that doing it this way is, is the right way. And because illnesses strike us at random, like cancer, people feel like they have no control. And if they can do something, take a supplement, mega three, you know, fatty acids or vitamin D, or in this case, buy organic, they feel like they're taking control of their health. That's a very important issue. Now, whether it's worth $6,000 is a different story, but it's a very important issue.

Roger: Well, that $6,000 really is. If you feel strongly and it helps you lean into being proactive and have agency, it's your decision to make.

>> Roger Whitney: Absolutely. yeah. I'm not telling people what to do here, you know, and in my life. Some of your listeners may know Gail was recently diagnosed with metastatic uterine cancer. And so, you know, she's. When I go to the market and she says, oh, can you buy me some organic blueberries or organic blackberries? Of course, I say, yes, honey. and, and if you're really quite concerned, and we'll get to this later, there are certain foods that are probably, you know, more safe and less safe. Like if it. Okay, like a, like a banana, it's got a peel, an onion, it's got a peel, probably the organic is not going to make any difference. But if you're having leafy lettuce and blueberries and other berries, then maybe, you know, you, you, you sort of come up with A middle ground. And that's what I've done with Gail. I mean, left to my own devices, I buy most things that are not organic. But there are some things I do because that's what she would prefer. And of course I say yes, honey.

80% OF THE US POPULATION DOESN'T GET ENOUGH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES.

Roger: Okay, so the data, the data is not definitive. Where do we want to go from here?

>> Roger Whitney: Okay, so there's a piece of this puzzle that's very important for folks to understand. We're just talking about the simple organic versus conventional fruits and vegetables. 80% of the US population doesn't get enough fruits and vegetables at all. Forget whether it's conventional or not. And if you look at people who get two servings of fruits and veggies a day versus five, the benefits of having more fruits and veggies, you have a 13% mortality reduction and a 1/3 reduction in cancer. Okay, that's, you know, 330 out of 1,000 people versus what I was saying, six people out of a thousand. So having fruits and veggies is a big deal. Now, of course, these are observational data. They run the same risk as the people who have more fruits and veggies also exercise more. But the magnitude of impact is eat more fruits and veggies. It appears to be way more beneficial than the issue of organic versus not. And there was a wonderful modeling study that said, what if half of the US Population ate one more fruit or veggie a day? What would that look like? Well, there'd be 20,000 fewer cancer cases if people just ate more fruits and veggies.

DR. BOBBY BREAKS DOWN THE ROI ON BUYING ORGANIC.

So, okay, so now that leads us to the ROI question. So I said before that about $6,000 per family is what the organic cost increment is. Now I also said that if you, if you believe the data on cancer, which I don't necessarily do, but if you do use that number, then if 1,000 people ate organic, we'd have six fewer cancers. So you do the math, and that's called number needed to treat about 150, 160, meaning it would take 150 people eating organic to save one cancer. So if you do the math, $6,000 a person to save, you know, one cancer out of about 150 you end up with to save a cancer will cost us me $300,000. So that's really balancing the cost per year. 6,000, 6,000. 6,000. 6,000 with the likelihood it would make a difference. And it comes out to be 300,000. And you can decide whether that is worth it or that's not.

Roger: Well, they're not actually spending the 300,000 because it's individuals.

>> Roger Whitney: Right. But it's a lottery whether it's going to make a difference.

Roger: It's interesting. It's interesting. And, this, and tell me if I'm saying this incorrectly. The way I hear it being framed is very much a way that an insurance company or a policymaker would think through, through it. Right? Because it's a cost benefit of, you know, rolling it out. Like if an insurance company was to pay for fruits and vegetables, they would go through this type of analysis to get an idea of how much impact it might have on the population. Which I get. That kind of analysis has to be done. But as I'm thinking about, I'm like, these statistics become. When I think from the ground up, like me, they become, hey, you barking at Sherlock. They become less interesting because I'm just caring about. I don't care what the statistics say. If I'm the one. Oh, if I can. Even if it's a lottery, you know, it's like the, it's a recession if your neighbor loses his job, it's a depression. If you lose your same thing, right. If, you know, a friend of mine has cancer, it's sad. If I have cancer, it's devastating that, you know, that by itself would make me play the lottery in my mind.

>> Roger Whitney: Everyone will make their own decision. The $6,000 is real. That's kind of indisputable. The benefit, obviously, it's, it's a random thing whether you'll get any benefit or no benefit. So, you know, If I had $6,000 and I said, should I buy organic? Well, obviously I made the decision, is no, I'm not buying everything.

Roger: Before we go there, one thing I, what I just articulated, at least for myself, I don't know whether it made sense to anybody else, is essentially the hook for marketing and getting people to do it. Well, if you're the one, it's worth the effort, but it's still not objective because I'm talking from an emotional level here. But it really is. If it's 6,000. Now we're getting to what we're, we're talking about before. Where is the best place to spend that? Because we all have limited funds.

>> Roger Whitney: That's right. So if I spend my 6,000 every year, there's a 1 in 150 chance that it might make a difference in terms of cancer. Okay. But we know if you get exercise three times a week, you're going to get way more benefit. Well, okay, you're not getting the exercise, but what if you hired a trainer? Then you're more likely to get exercise. You know, you could take that hundred dollars a week, pay a trainer. Now you've got that done. Or spend $2,000 and buy a better mattress so you sleep better. Or as you said earlier, maybe that goes toward justifying a concierge doctor. Or you buy that, you know, heart rate monitor or a home blood pressure monitor or any of a number of.

Roger: Or a food scale or all those types of things.

>> Roger Whitney: Exactly. So to me, that $6,000 year in, year out can be better spent other ways or put towards retiring early.

Roger: You know what's interesting about that calculus? It's 100% true, right? Exercise. You know, we've talked before about exercise and weight management and the very clear data in terms of heart disease, et cetera. We've talked about the importance of sleep, we talked about, hey, first get the amount of food, vegetables that you need.

>> Roger Whitney: Exactly. That's a cheap expense.

Roger: Yeah, but behaviorally getting a trainer, there's a higher sticker price and you actually have to do work. Fruits and vegetables, you have to change your eating habits etc. And some of the attraction to just spending at organic is it's point of sale purchase you feel better, right?

>> Roger Whitney: Absolutely.

Roger: Yeah. And that's in the moment.

>> Roger Whitney: Now it's important to point out that this discussion is not focusing on broader environmental questions or kindness to animals questions. We're really talking just about the human health, our bodies and what the impact might or might not be. So there you may say I want free range beef, but that's because I care about the cows and I want them to have a nice life. That's really not part of this equation. And if that's the reason for, for buying certain types of foods, by all means then you should.

Roger: That's a good, good thing to point out. Good thing to point out.

IF YOU DO BUY ORGANIC, WHICH PRODUCTS SHOULD YOU BUY?

Roger: So before we wrap up, let's go back to if we're going to buy organic, what in you mentioned some of them. Where should we maybe lean towards more organic and where is it? Maybe not as big a deal.

>> Roger Whitney: Yeah. So there's what's been called the dirty dozen. Things you want to avoid that aren't organic. And there's the clean 15.

Roger: Okay.

>> Roger Whitney: Basically if it's got a shell or it's got a husk or it's got a peel, it probably doesn't matter. So like a pineapple or a corn or avocados or bananas Those things, basically should not be tarnished by having conventional farming done. But if you're really big on, you know, as I said, blueberries and other things, or, or cherries or kale, then spinach, you might say, okay, well I'm, I'm not going to be an all or nothing. I'm going to kind of figure out, you know, item by item. That's one way to say I'm not spending 6,000. Maybe I'll only spend a thousand on the organic stuff and I'll choose these.

Roger: You know what I'm really bad about? like we have blueberries downstairs. I'm lazy. I won't take them to the sink and wash them. I'll just eat them. Is that bad? Probably not in the scheme of things.

>> Roger Whitney: I don't eat enough of them, I don't think so. I'm, about to do a podcast on the five second rule.

Roger: Okay. I love it.

>> Roger Whitney: Peanut butter lands face down on, on the ground. Do you have five seconds to grab it and eat it? Which is going to be hilarious because number one time doesn't matter. The bugs will get to your peanut butter instantaneously. But then you get the more fun question, which is, you know, a few bugs on my peanut butter might actually be beneficial.

Roger: I actually want, you know, and I know you're experimenting many with video. I want you to have field tests on this for. With video.

>> Roger Whitney: Oh, that would be fun.

Roger: I hadn't thought about that in the dirt on the sidewalk.

>> Roger Whitney: But I don't want people to get, you know, before I come up with the actual podcast episode. You do not want to eat your peanut butter that fell in a hospital. Lots of bugs you don't want to get. Obviously if you're pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, probably not a good idea, but for many people. And what do I do? I live by the five second rule. In fact, I don't even care if it's five seconds. and I have dogs and whatever, so it's going to pick up dog junk. But, you know, they lick me anyway, so what difference does it make?

Roger: So this was intended to be just, a curious examination of organic and factoring in the cost relative to other options. That was the intent. And we get really, you know, I just receive it as that because we, we each are trying to make our own decisions and whether and on what we do, but also the cost related to that and there's an opportunity cost. So how do we want to wrap this up?

>> Roger Whitney: I think, as you've correctly said, we're not here to be judgmental about what you should do. I think, there are some potential benefits. They're very modest, and there's some very real costs. And like all life decisions, you know, you're going to get the fancier car or the less fancier car. The fancier car. You'll enjoy it. The stereo system's better, and you do the calculus and you say, you know, for the 10 years I'm going to have the car, it's worth spending, you know, x thousand dollars more. I just want folks to understand that it's not without cost, that they already knew. But people, I think, assume that the benefits were pretty substantial. And the reality is the benefits probably aren't. And folks will have to do the calculus for themselves as to whether it's worth it or not. I come down with some things are organic and most of it's not. That I buy.

BOBBY TALKS ABOUT HIS PODCAST AND THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING WHEN DEALING WITH ILLNESS.

Roger: All right, Bobby, thanks so much for hanging out with us. You can find Bobby on your awesome podcast. What are you guys talking about on it right now?

>> Roger Whitney: Well, I went down the path of explaining that Gail, got cancer. So we talked about, how do you navigate a serious illness? Not cancer. Could be any disease. And there's steps that are helpful. The one that came out this week is a lot of fun, which is the power of positive thinking. So people would say to Gail, oh, you have such a positive spirit. I know you're going to do well, or I'll pray for you. So, of course, I had to go down the rabbit hole of, is there any evidence to support that? Yes, it feels good to hear those things, but is there any evidence that positive people live longer? Or if you try to be positive, you'll beat your heart, disease or whatever it is? So that's, some recent ones that I. I have just come out with.

Roger: Awesome. We'll have links to it in the noodle. And, as always, good to see you, Bobby.

>> Roger Whitney: Likewise. Great fun, as always.

SMART SPRINT

Roger: Now it's time to set a baby step you can take in the next seven days not just to rock retirement, but rock life. All right, in the next seven days, pull out your retirement plan of record. You have one, don't you? Review your goals, hold them up for examination using the protocol that we discussed today. Great thing to do in journaling, by the way, because it helps get it out of your head. Ask them those challenging questions, make sure they're relevant for who you are and where you want to go today.

OUTRO

Roger: Here at the end, I want to take a moment and give a huge shout out for everyone it takes to do this podcast. I don't do this enough. I get to be the voice and hang out with you and I'm, the public figure. But I couldn't do any of this without Tina, who helps do research on questions, Graham, who does the podcast and the transcripts, Allison, who writes the show notes and handles stuff I don't even know, and Nicole Rockstar Mills, who is the organizing force of energy that keeps everything moving forward. Kind of acknowledge them more. They do an awesome job in helping all of us rock retirement. Oh, yeah. Did I mention last, not least you, all the emails I get, the questions that I get, the constructive criticism I get, the praise I get. It means a lot. And this is. You make this better. Because I do my best to listen and focus on what's on your mind and what the core issues are without going down rabbit holes. So hopefully you're enjoying this journey. I know I am. Thank you.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All, performance reference is historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.