Think Smart, Retire Smarter: Razor Sharp- Occam and Hanlon
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IT shows a proud member of the retirement podcast network. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leon devi, welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement but to have the confidence because you're doing the work to really leave in and rocket today in the show going to do two things.

Number one is we're going to finish our exercises on buildings of mental models so you can rock retirement by talking about ops and handed seconds or going to have doctor bobbi, the boys on our rocklike segment to talk about how not just to live longer, but perhaps have more energy while you're alive. It's been been a while since we have doctor bob beyond we need to fix that. We've been a little bit cutter here.

I like to do really long episodes, but i'm excited to talk to Bobby. Before I get started, I want to invite you to join me on november seven at seven P. M. Central for a live online made up. We're we're gona do two things.

I'm going to teach a little bit on how to use organized thinking to think through rough conversion so you can get to a judgment call that you feel confident in because this can be a very complicated subject. So we going to do some teaching and how to think through the rough conversion decision. Secondly, i'm going to invite you to consider joining the rock retirement club, will talk about the club and what IT has to offer.

We put together in one place all the tools and education you need to create a retirement plan you can have confidence in, and a community of over thousand people with expert coaching to help you actually live out rocking retirement and work on the financial and the nonfinancial side. This will be our last open enrollment for two thousand twenty four and also be the last enroll mt, at the current Price, because we will be increasing the Price for future members in twenty five. So come check out the teaching as well as the open house for the rock retirement club.

You can register IT live with Roger that come to be their live or to get the replay. alright. With that said, let's get on to today's mental models.

So today we're going to talk about oculus, razer and handler's razer. And my first question was, when I started studying these, why are they called readers? And that makes sense. And that the razor refers to the metaphor cutting away of unnecessary complications over the last two to three years, as we work to Operation alive, the agile retirement management process got sandbourne tork ter hydrate. And many others have been instrumental in that.

I actually experience this without really knowing this framework, in that in order to create four pillars with clear boundaries of how do I make a vision, how do I assess whether it's feasible? How do I make IT resilient and optimize? In order to get to that simplicity and organization, we went through a lot of detailed outlying an examination in order to simplify IT.

On the other end, which is conservative, we had to go away down at the rabbit hole to explore lots of different options, to come back out the other side with four pillars to focus on what's most important. So a lot times you do have to go deep into things. Same thing with rough conversions.

And you'll see that as we talk about IT, if you join us for a meet up on november seven, is we have a very detailed structure for analysis of rough conversions. But initially, you can go the simple out, which will probably be good enough for nineteen ninety plus percent of the people. You don't always have to go down the rabbit hole.

And that's essentially what OK m. Raiser talks about, is that when confronted with multiple explanations or a lot of options, typically the simplest one requiring the fewest assumptions is the best. So simply said, don't over complicate things.

Now when we hear simplicity, our mind often think simplice ik something that simply list c that really isn't thought out. It's too basic and there wasn't enough thinking into a simplistic is definitely dangerous because it's not addressing all the things that might you might have to put into a retirement plan. But simplicity is after you go through the depth of the rabid hole of all the details and come out to focus on the most important things.

So simplistic is not the same as simplicity, and that's really an important distinction. So how do you actually apply this in retirement planning? Well, if we think of the four pillars, we got to know what our vision is.

We need to know that it's feasible and we need to make IT resilient. Those are the most important of the three pillars when we get to the optimization pillar, which is enhancing a plan that is resilient, feasible and focused on what we want, that is actually optional. Roth conversions would come under the fourth pillar of optimization.

In theory, you shouldn't have to do any optimization to rock retirement. This is just enhancing a journey that already solid. What's another application for all come? Let's think of investment selection. Generally, a simple strategy using improving options is going to be the best solution instead of researching active managers, looking for sector rotation calls or all the sorts of strategies that are market or even alternative investments and private investments, there are so many ways that we can overcomplicate investment selection.

While others, razer would argue that we'll just focus on the simple proven options and don't go down the rabbit hole of all these of the things that aren't really going to add are likely going to add significant value to your retirement journey. Definitely something that individuals struggle with. The simplicity seems simplistic.

And everybody out there is telling us that IT is simplistic, not realizing that IT it's more than enough strategy to achieve the objective. What's another way that all chem raiser could apply in retirement planning to think about spending? OEM eraser would argue that you could begin by just focusing on your current spending or developing a high level based great life budget rather than going down the rabbit hole of billions on a elaborate budget.

And usually we're building these budgets before we're tired and we're trying to forecast the life that we've never actually lived. OK reader would argue. Why don't you just start with what you're spending now or doing a bed great life budget without getting in too much detail?

Initially, that may be good enough for most of us now, not always. Sometimes you do need to get down in the weeds, but for ninety percent of us, IT probably is not the case. Not about tax planning.

That would be another example where we could apply outcomes razor focus on simple, well known strategies. If i'm in a low tax year, do you qualify distributions or consider of conversions? If you just focused on these simple options, you're going na garner the majority of tax optimization strategies that you could have realize that you have large R M S.

In the future. So prioritize roth conversions are qualified distributions. That's gonna much more helpful.

Then going down tax strategies, tax shelters, multiyear planning, that of decisions that are way off in the future that will actually bog down the process and cause you either to throw your hands up in exasperation, say that one, right, always those mixed up and not do anything. We actually ran into this because we're building a rough conversion decision. Pod for the rock retirement club should be out in december.

And initially, we approached IT with how we do IT, which is extremely complicated. We go through a lot of tax planning that takes time and effort, and we pivoted from that strategy for the decision pod that we're going to give to rock retirement club members in that we're going to go phase one. What's the simple version of this like going to the general practitioner to assess yourself from a high level and prescribe action plans based off of making sure we just don't make unformed, irs or ms.

Easy opportunities and also determine whether after that, face one, you go down the rabbit hole in face two. So in the minority of the cases, you actually do have to do all this detailed work because a lot of this can be overwhelming. So it's probably important to go to the general practitioner, as example, do a basic assessment and maybe solve the problem there just by filtering up your tax bracket bucket or doing a rough conversion.

And only a minority need to go to a specialist or go down the rabbit hole of the detailed tax analysis that some of us like to get into. So that's an example of how a razer always look for simplicity in the answers because likely that's going to get you what you need, the meat of what you need. And it's also gonna set yourself up for success because you will overcomplicate something that you need to manage over and over again, which increases execution risk.

Now IT quits to handler's razer, which says, never attribute to manus that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or ignorance. I actually have been practicing that one for a number of years when IT comes to the podcast, believe IT or not, over last eleven years, I get, I don't know how many thousands and thousands of emails over the years, ninety nine percent of them encouraging or asking questions, but I get a lot of feedback from people that, oh, you forgot to mention this, or alright, hard critique, sometimes very unkind critique. And I made the decision long ago that when I get an email, i'm going to assume that the person has the best intent in mind and IT just may be the way that they are communicating IT.

So I assume that there is no mAlice and that they might be ignorant of something, but they're not doing a out of malay's just expressing themselves and maybe not the most eloquent way. That has actually helped me a lot in life, not just with receiving emails for the podcast, but the key point here, focus on air over malas. People often jump to conclusions, assuming others are not a bad intention.

In reality, that might just be a mistake or an overside or just a casual, an intentional slight, also another key point of hand. Loser, hey, there's human air. humans.

You and ee are super messy people. We make mistakes all the time, and in most situations, people are not deliberately trying to harm our cause problems. And this really encourage as empathy.

Just taking this stance. And it's very easy to apply this to the guy that get off or the inventor text that you receive. Just assume they have best intent, which is likely the case.

They just might have been acting unintentionally, a lot of anger eeta. So how do you apply this to retirement planning? Well, number one, IT can help you be kinder to.

The person need to be kinder to. And that yourself, looking at your past decisions on investing or planning or what have you, we're usually really, really hard on ourselves. And we forget that, hey, we lacked knowledge and we were in our own journey. Y, at that time, in hindsight, we wish we would did this letter of the other thing. So using handlings razor can help us be a little with kinder to ourselves.

Or if you're working with a planner and let's say you email them and they failed to follow up or this communicator recommendation handler's, razer would suggest assuming its due to an oversight or misunderstanding rather than some miles are delivered in tempt to mislead you Better just to have the conversation. Sometimes i'll use my case. Sometimes I miss replying to A E mail or I miss the context of a conversation that i've had with a client.

And i'm talking about one thing thinking, this is what we're talking about when really they admit something else that I just happened to miss. Communication between advisors or even with spouses are messy, so we have to assume best and tend to be more productive in those conversations. This often happens when managing safe retirement assets are discussing inheritance.

I've walked the journey with clients dealing with extended family, and who gets what photo? What are we going to do with the house of our parents eta? This can be very difficult. And some members of family and i've seen that can be very difficult, that can be very unCoOperative.

And all right, mean, handler's raisers should just assuming their behavior may stem from misunderstandings or emotional stressed rather than they're just being a jerk and they're just trying to grab money, we don't know what mental drama they're going on. And so both of these are very simple to just remind ourselves of to not overcomplicate things so we can focus on creating a great life and that get caught up, and stuff that is really just noise, right? So that's the end.

Environmental models, if you want to dive mental models more. As I started building in researching this, I came across a book called the great mental models, volume one by farm street. And they actually have a set of four books, fantastic books, that summarize these mental models very succinctly and approach able forms.

You can check those out open at a link to those in sick shot saturday. With that said, let's get on and check with doctor Bobby boys. We are going to focus on building energy in order to show up, in order to rock retirement, to help us, as always. Is doctor bobbi to boys?

Are you do bobbi? I'm in a non inflaming mood and hoping I will live to be a hundred.

But right, well, not in flame tory. I think that's a good thing. So what are we going to talk about today?

Exactly that. This is a good thing. So we are going to talk about four different studies.

And they all have key lessons, very practical lessons, but they all relate to one another. And you might think they don't. But the story will all come together in due time. And not surprisingly, given what I said just a moment ago, it's about inflation, tion and things related to that and ultimately about living potentially to be a hundred.

i'm going to try not to jump ahead and just trust the flow of this. Do we need to have a primer on information? Or is that going to be revealed as we look at these studies?

I'll try to reveal IT. okay. I think people have a kind of a generic sense of IT, but i'll i'll give you some more specifics.

okay. So what is the first study to build .

this story? okay. The first study looked at how sleep, which we've talked about many times before, getting not enough sleep in increases your bodies measures of inflation tion.

So the brief primary inflation tion. So if you sprain your ankle, you're going to get swelling and all the rest. And that's what you want.

Pick your body is helping you get Better if you have a cold. Yes, you won. All the White cells and antibodies read up to make you healthy again. But if you're under stress or you have cancer or you have chronic illness, your body can remain read up from an inflation tion standpoint. And that's not a good thing.

So there are various measures of IT that your doctor can do with blood tests like your White blood sell count and see reactive proteins and other one of those things, and there's a various others, but there are things you can measure that might suggest there's some sort of inflation tion going on. And so this first study asked the question, we know that not getting enough sleep leads to bad things. That leads to higher risk of mortality, higher risk of heart disease, higher risk of cognitive decline.

And maybe part of this is mediated through inflation tion. So IT was a small study. So I can't say we will have the defender of the answer here. A small study, thirteen Young men and they said, okay, for the next four nights, five nights, you're only getting get four hours of sleep and by any may's measure, that's not enough sleep. And then after those five nights, then you got two recovery nights.

And this sounds an awful a lot like many of us when we're very busy at work and with family and life where we may not get much sleep during the week, and then we try to get more sleep on the weekend. And so they measured a bunch of blood test, and some of the ones I measured red, as well as your heart rate. What do they find? They found that when you went through this phase of not getting sleep, these blood proof measures got worth suggesting your body head inflation tion.

So that was the first thing. The second thing was when you had the recovery nights, I didn't undo the problem. And this is really important because people think i'll just catch up on my sleep on the weekend.

No, the damage is done. The damage will persist. So you really, really wanna a try to avoid those low sleep nights.

So I assume with a study like this that they get a baseline beforehand of what the numbers are. So are they actually the participants aren't coming in already .

elevated this? No, you absolutely have to have a baseline. And again, this study could been bigger and more complete. But yes, they absolutely had a baseline. And now it's an interesting that so many interesting things that come out of this.

But one of the things that I get asked all the time, oh, I went out late last night and I have to get up to get to work at a reasonable hour. I was thinking I would still try to get to the gym. So, doctor Bobby, should I get less sleep tonight and get to the gym? Do my exercise because you said that very important, or should I sleep in and not go to the gym?

So it's a trade off like much of life. And the answer is you can't make up the loss sleep just like i've talked about the two days the recovery didn't do IT, but you absolutely can make up your gym workout. So the next day you maybe do a longer workout or you work next, work out the next day in the week. So given a choice between the gym and sleep, doctor Bobby says, get the sleeve is to .

say only nine hours in bed. Just as an example, Better to get the nine hours than Better than to get up an hour a half early in order to get my work out in exactly.

exactly. Now, has there been a analyzed control trial? no. But what this study suggests is you don't immediately wake up, make up the loss, sleep from a standpoint of inflation tion. And there's other data, the brain and and toxins and the brain, which we won't get into. But bottom line, try to get gate sleep every night, right?

What's the next study? And how does IT connect .

to the first one? Yes, great question. So the first study says, if you don't sleep, your inflammation is going to be worse. The next one is, well, kind of, so what is inflamed tion bad? At least these measures of inflation tion that you can test in your blood.

And so this is a study that followed one hundred and sixty thousand people for six years, so a long time, and they measured various things in the blood sum about your blood cells that see reactive protein, which is something else that that folks measure. And what they found was that if you had one of these things that measured and suggest inflation tion, you had almost a three fold increase in mortality over the course of that six years. And if that wasn't bad enough, if several of them we're all pointing in the wrong direction, you had a seven to nine fold increase in mortality and cancer mortality and risk of stroke in all.

So the first study said, you sleep. These measures of information look worse. This next study says, well, measures of information are night, a simple good thing. They suggest bad things will happen. Now again, can we then point to let let bad sleep leads to death? No, but we're starting to piece some things together that are not so good.

All of this feels like walking around in fog a little bit. There's connections to the things you sleep impacts information inflation, tion markers, increase mortality rates and you you throw the numbers. I don't I can't think of what those numbers actually mean, but IT sounds worse yeah. We don't know that there's a causation necessarily if it's a connected APP, but its information to help inform decision making even if it's not a complete causation.

I think that's exactly right now. In the past, i've talked about studies that link if you don't get enough sleep, IT increases your mortality. So we actually have put some pieces of the puzzle together in prior studies, what those studies haven't been able to teach us as why why we poor sleep lead to dying early. And you get at all sorts of hypotheses. But this is now saying, or maybe it's being mediated in part through inflation tion.

Information is influenced by sleep. And so connecting the dots is, I think of this is, how do we just eliminate some unfold irs, oh, what is just get Better sleep prioritized that will eliminate some unfortunate of you influences, inflation, tion and other things.

Totally good. totally. I mean, this is just another reason to believe that focusing on your sleep is a good thing. And if you don't believe this, just go back to the other discussions we've had in the past, how important sleep is on so many other levels. This is just adding to that.

We will have a link to one of those in our six shot saturday email. Now on your your podcast, have you had a episode on sleep yet?

absolutely. I don't remember which episode is is probably episode four. But if you go to live long and well with doctor Bobby, go back to the beginning and it's one of the first episodes and it's on sleep in the beauty .

of we'll find IT and put a link to IT. I think that's a email.

O yes. And as a reminder, there are twelve very tangible things you can do to improve your sleep. So sleep is really, really important. I may sleep a fifty nato, or you know, I melt there as a champion. That's what I am.

So what's the third study?

Well, third study, rather than being debby down or and being like, oh, this is just awful. Now the questions, can we do something about this inflation stuff? Or can we improve our sleep? So this basically shows that the other thing I really love, which is exercise, and this was a series of studies there in one thousand clinical trials, and they were in people who had insomnia a so they weren't sleeping well.

And they asked the question in these studies, would exercise, improve the insomnia, allow them to sleep Better. And they found in those people who exercise, sleep got Better, both subjectively, they felt Better. And they also had some objective sleep measures.

And one of these things that I get very excited about is there was a dose response relationship, meaning more exercise, you got even more sleep benefit. So yes, I love exercise. IT helps us in so many ways. But now exercise helps us sleep. So sleep and you're not getting enough of IT is hurting your inflamed tion that maybe exercise can help that process practically.

I totally have connected those dots.

beautiful.

totally have connected even. And I may work transition exerciser. I exercise at the end of work, but before evening I think I probably would help more if I was a morning exercises. But i'm not IT just doesn't fit rhythm of my day. But definitely connect that dot beautiful.

So basic, if you take those three studies that teaches us poor sleep worsens inflation tion. Inflation tion is bad and relates to mortality. But exercise can improve our sleep and hopefully reduce that inflation tion. So that's how those three studies fit together as a as a little story.

We have one final study. I believe we do.

Now it's not part of that inflation tion, one I said at the beginning, I was feeling in a non inflaming mood, and I was hoping i'll live to be a hundred and we all would love. I think we'd all love to be living to be a hundred hundred and we might have to tweet our retirement plan to make sure that goes out to one hundred. To make sure our money will last not just to ninety and ninety five.

But this was a study that asked the question, if you had a bunch of eight year olds and you follow them for twenty years, who was more likely and less likely to live to be a hundred? And I want to be one of those men that lives to be a hundred. And what they found is that people.

And so there were, there were five characteristics of an eighty old that they looked at smoking, that they ever smoke, could eat sea, they're drinking stas, how much alcohol they consumed. Exercises, not surprisingly, whether they were regular exercises or not. Something called dietary diversity, which is eating fruits and vegetables and fish and beans and tea almost every day.

So basically were doing all the good nutritional things. And your body mass index wait was in a good place. And so people, the eighty rules, who had all five of these, had a sixty one percent greater likelihood of living to be a hundred.

And I was like, great. These are things that we've been talking about, and i'm certainly trying to do. And if we do them, maybe we won't just live to be eighty, we will live to be a hundred. So I like this study, and there was a positive one for me.

We will also have links to the studies mentioned. Beautiful world of you that wants to go down the abbott a little bit deeper. But for those that do not, let's sum up the takeaway.

I think that the takeaway are there are things we can do that can really help us live long and well. And it's the many things we've talked about for here today. Sleep is really, really important.

Try to get you seventy eight hours of sleep. Exercise is really, really important. And again, i've talked a lot about what the elements of exercise are. And then these other things like your alcohol intake, your eating, keeping your weight under control, are not just theoretically ally important to us, but can really make a difference and help us live well beyond eighty, hopefully up to and even including one hundred.

So bobbi, i'm going to end with this segment with a phrase that I repeat to myself when I find myself being in, concluded my thinking with my actions, eating healthy, moderate during game exercise. So many things that are somewhat common sense, as you've talked about, that I totally agree with, but I don't do consistently enough. So this just take sleep as an example.

And whenever I find that in concurrency, it's like, okay, I got to actually do this stuff otherwise just knowing IT and feeling good that I know that I agree with IT doesn't help me and i'll take out any of color words because he uses a lot of them, but I always makes me think of David gags, who's this examples of what you're capable love in terms of enduring? And he says one phrase he uses, don't talk about IT, be about IT. It's being about IT where you create a life and getting sleep in doing these things. So the question for the day as well, how can we be a little bit more about the things that you talked about? So thanks for sharing anybody.

My great pleasure on Marks.

Get set.

And are off to sit, a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. Right in the next seven days, I want you to look for an opportunity practice otus or handler's razor. How can you choose a similar solution?

How can you receive something and assume they have the best intent? If you have those opportunities, see how you react to those, take a day or two, and then reassessed to see if and actually helped you move on and be more productively. You can rock retirement.

Right before I leave, I ve got to hear you a funny story. So I want to thank all the people that are involved in producing this show. We have Laura monkey dog, who does all the graphics and the hand darts that we shared via six shot saturday email.

We have alison, who does the show notes in some of the social post. We have a call who does six shot saturday, makes everything work. And we have gram gore, who is my nephew, who is the new poddar ast editor.

And I had to laugh with gram because I woke up last week up a ode when he was editing in that one. And remember when I talked about being a pilot, and I was just kidding. Well, I get these text from gram saying, number one, first text was your pilot, then the next tax.

A few minutes later, he was like, bro, trick your own editor and he was like, I have to smoke his head face. He was like, laughing because I tricked him and then he said, you had me thinking you were straight up pilot. I was like saying to myself, how the world do I not know this? So graham, I GTA so easy to sound like an expert these days and that scary.

Thanks for all the work everybody does. And if I fail, there are so many people about team of 10 that work on the show， in the club and everything else. So love you all, hope you have a great day.

The opines voice in this podcast for general information only is not intended to provide specific of baseball recommendations for any individual. All performance references historically and does not guarantee future results. All induces are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal text or financial advisor before making any decisions.