In this enlightening episode of Retirement Unpacked, Al Smith moves beyond financial planning and dives into something just as essential for your golden years—mental sharpness. Al explores the importance of breaking routine, engaging in mentally stimulating hobbies, and learning memory-enhancing techniques like mnemonics. From silly memory tricks to ancient Greek methods, from crossword puzzles to volunteer tutoring, Al shows how staying mentally agile makes retirement not only longer—but better. Learn how to build a “memory palace,” why variety is key, and how exercise and social engagement can make all the difference. This episode is packed with practical, engaging tips
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Hi, this is Al Smith with Golden Eagle Financial, speaking for God and country. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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KLZ 560, your home station.
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Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Golden Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith.
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Welcome to another program of Retirement Unpacked. I want to thank you for tuning in because there’s lots of other things you could be doing. This is a summer day. You could be playing golf, tennis. You could be up in the mountains. A lot of things you could be doing, but you’re listening to me. I appreciate that, and I believe I’ll have some good information for you today. If you’ve listened to the show for… Let’s say a number of years because I’ve been on the air for about four and a half years. You probably may recall I’ve done a few shows on mental acuity and memory improvement and things like that, which I’m going to talk about it again because we can… save money for retirement, and we can have a healthy nest egg, and we can create a strategy so that we can be reasonably certain our income will last for our lifetime. But I think it’s also important to know that our mental cognition be strong during a as much of that period of time as possible, if not the entire period. I know people who are well into their 80s and early 90s who are sharp as a tack, and I know some other folks who are considerably younger that are starting to get drifty. I don’t know their medical backgrounds. I just know that having a sharp mind and being able to do things that having a sharp mind require can make your retirement much more joyous. There’s no question about that. And mental acuity or mental sharpness requires a little bit of work, no different than physical strength and physical health. What is the enormous enemy of mental sharpness and mental improvement and so forth is routine. When you do the same things over and over, that doesn’t provide any kind of challenge for your brain. On the other hand, variety does create challenge. If you have somewhere where you go every day, select a different route. Unless it’s outrageously more traffic, if it’s maybe a 10 or a 15-minute drive, and if it’s not too much different which way you go in terms of traffic, go different ways each day. How many times have you seen yourself taking a turn to go where you go every day, even though on this particular day, you were going somewhere else. I find that often to be the case myself. And although I prepared somewhat for this show, when I left my office, I forgot my wallet. But I only got a short distance before I retrieved it. But the point is, having a sharp memory is like anything else. It requires work. And the enemy of having a sharp mind as we age is routine. So we want to vary as much as possible from routine as much as we can. How many times have you driven somewhere And you lock your car and you get to the front door of wherever you’re going, whether it’s a friend’s home or a store or something like that. And you think to yourself, did I lock my car? Well, you go back and check and find out, well, yes, you did. But the reason you didn’t remember locking the car is because that’s part of your routine. And when something is part of your routine, it doesn’t necessarily create a strong memory if it’s something you do every day. On the other hand, when you lock your car and you hear that click or the beep, Do something out of the ordinary that might even make you look foolish, but you will know for certain that you’ve locked the car. You can click the fob with your right thumb, and you can… make a fist with your left hand, raise it in the air, and you might look stupid, but you will know for sure you will have an ingrained memory that you locked your car. You won’t have to go back 50 or 100 feet and check if you locked it or go within fob distance and click it again. Socialization is a tremendous… thing that assists our awareness and our mental capacity in retirement. When we meet other people, it requires a little bit of brain work. If you meet someone and you have difficulty remembering people’s names, there’s little tricks you can use. If you meet someone who’s named George. and you have a conversation with him, use his name in that conversation. Oh, George, have you lived here long? What kind of work do you do, George? Do you live nearby, or did you come a little longer distance to attend this event? When you use that name once or twice, you will remember it. On the other hand, if someone introduces himself and you get off talking about something, that you have interest in, you’ve already sort of put George’s name in the back recesses of your memory. On the other hand, if you use it two or three times in a conversation when you meet someone, you will remember his or her name. Something I strongly recommend is playing word games. Some of those I don’t do. I don’t do Sudoku, but I do… I do Wordle on my phone, and there’s a couple others, crossword puzzles, and there’s a jumble, a jumble of words, and then a puzzle at the end of that. Those I find somewhat interesting, but they also keep your mind sharp. I remember as a very young man visiting the home of my grandparents. And my grandfather on my mother’s side, he would sit in the same chair every night. He was kind of a victim of routine, but his routine kept his mind sharp. He would work crossword puzzles with a mechanical pencil. Those of you who are listening who are young may not know what a mechanical pencil is, but it’s like a pencil with lead that you refill as you use it up, and he would use that to do crossword puzzles. And my mother, before she passed away not too long ago, she would do crossword puzzles also, and she would get angry with herself if she would forget things, but… That wasn’t until she was well into her 90s, and at that time she was still fairly sharp before pancreatic cancer took her to life about the same time as Alex Trebek, the long-time MC of Jeopardy passed from the same illness. He lasted a little bit longer. He probably had a bigger bankroll that kept him alive about six months longer than my mother. But I don’t know what quality of life he had during that period. But in any event, there are some important steps we can take, some important things that we can do so that our minds will stay sharp well into having left the workforce. And one is pick up a new hobby, something that is somewhat challenging. You may get a concealed carry and purchase a firearm, go to the range. That’s something you can learn about. Learn about firearm safety. Learn about the basic skills that you would need for personal protection and family protection. Pick up some different kind of hobby, paddle boarding. If you have a heart for volunteering and you’re in good enough health, Winter Park has a tremendous disabled ski program. Find a way that you can not only keep your mind sharp, but give back to the community in some way. Those of you who are engineers or people of that nature who have a strong background in math can be very useful in tutoring young people who are having difficulty with trigonometry or geometry or complex algebra, quadratic equations, things of that nature. People who are engineers have had many years of science and math and can be extremely helpful for younger people as they’re getting further along in math. And math is incredibly important. It’s surprising how many people don’t have a really good grasp on math. That’s something that you could be really helpful with some of the young people. I belong to Kiwanis and they have some tremendous programs that are very, very helpful for young people. Another thing that’s quite important in maintaining health not only mental health but physical health is exercise and there’s a book called spark and i don’t have the author but you can look it up i’m sure on google and find it on amazon it’s written by a physician and there is a school or rather a series of schools in a Illinois and they underwent a program where they all exercised in this particular school system and it was mandatory and they tested in science and in math and they compared their scores globally to other high school kids. This was a high school school district. And globally, they came first in the globe, not just in the United States, in science and seventh in math. And the only thing that this school was doing differently than most of the other schools who participated is that they had a requirement for vigorous aerobic exercise in the school system. Also, their obesity level went way, way down. down at that point. And if you are in good enough health, exercising as you go through retirement, it’ll increase your energy and it will keep your mind sharp. The more vigorous the exercise, if you’re able to do that, the better will the results be. Now, Memory improvement or mental acuity, the skills that are involved in that go way, way back even to Greek times, if you can imagine that. And there is a topic called mnemonics. which I will love to talk about, and it essentially was developed by the Greeks, and the word mnemonic has an unusual spelling, and essentially it’s training the brain to remember things. And the whole topic of it, as I said, is mnemonics. And there are people in the United States and actually all over the world that participate in what are called memory championships. And they use the techniques of mnemonics to help them remember things. To give you some idea of how skilled they are, the world record in memorizing an entire deck of cards, that’s 52 cards, the world record in memorization of an entire deck of cards is 20 seconds. And I’ll be talking more about mnemonics right after the break.
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This is your time to shine, to enjoy the rewards for the hard work and sacrifices you’ve made. Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial knows that a fulfilling retirement is less about your money and more about your time. The better you plan for your retirement, the more time you’ll have to enjoy it. You can enjoy it any way you like, whether it’s traveling, volunteering or exploring hobbies. Spend it your way. Al and Golden Eagle see time as a measurement of your wealth, but it’s difficult to strategize that for yourself. You need Al’s years of experience to help you evaluate it clearly and to convert that nest egg to a healthy income that lasts. Al thinks outside the spreadsheet, taking into consideration who you are and what drives you, what brings you joy. You’ve worked hard your whole life to enjoy your final years, and Al Smith can make sure you maximize your time in retirement, which is the true measure of wealth. Find out more about Golden Eagle Financial on the klzradio.com advertisers page. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.
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Welcome back to Retirement Unpacked. I had just mentioned the word mnemonics before we went to break. And basically, mnemonics is a technique that people use to memorize things. And you might be thinking, well, why is that important to memorize things? Well, if you go to the store and you don’t have a list… It’s good to have some idea of what it is you’re going to purchase. And scientists and people who study this sort of thing, memory and so forth, they have said basically that we can only remember about six or seven things before we need to have it written down, have a list. And I’m firmly convinced that the cell phone has brought that down to maybe three or four. Have you ever been in a store where you see someone looking at all the various types of spices or something and they’ll be on the phone wanting to know what exactly it is? that he or she should purchase. But in any event, mnemonics is a technique of memorizing things, and it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There was an event in ancient Greek times where this roof tumbled and it crushed many, many people. And they were trying to arrive at the names of the people who were killed. And one of the orators, there was a speaker at this event, by remembering the location of the people and memory and mnemonics and so forth, loci can be extremely important because the way our brain works as far as remembering things, it remembers them by location. How many times have you seen yourself open one cabinet when what you really wanted was something in the cabinet right next door? I find this often to be the case. One really interesting thing about memory, or you can call it memory, or you can even call it forgetfulness, and that is When you pass through a corridor, there is a tendency to forget. How many times have you left one room, gone into another room to get something, and once you’re in the other room, you’ve forgotten what you went in there for? Well, this isn’t something that has to do with dementia or aging or anything. This is a phenomenon that was even discovered in some research. Notre Dame University, there’s a professor named Gabriel Radbanski. He calls it event boundary. And he did a study in the Quarterly Journal of Medicine. experimental psychology. And to summarize the study, when people pass through a particular corridor, they went through a door into another room, they would be very, very common that they would forget. But if people went that same distance but did not pass through a corridor, enter another room, they would have a much greater tendency to remember whatever it is. So that concept of going into another room and then you get there and you forgot what you went there for, you can overcome that by tying a string around your finger, which is kind of like foolishness. But what I would say is when you’re going to go to another room to get something, take that thought and by clenching your fist, you can put that thought in your fist. So by the time you’re in that other room, you’ll say, what did I come in here for? Oh, the thought remains in my fist. I came in here to get pen and paper. Or I came in here to get my cell phone, which I left in the other room. Or I came in here to get a book off the shelf. And by clenching that fist, you will overcome that natural bias that our brains have of when we go into another room, we forget what we went in there for. That is very common. But we’re getting back to mnemonics. And if you’d like to learn more about mnemonics, there is a book I highly recommend. It’s incredibly interesting. The title of the book is Moonwalking with Einstein. Now, that is a ridiculous title, I would agree. But the concept of the book has to do with memory athletes, and they use the concept of mnemonics in order to memorize things. Like I mentioned, 20 seconds to memorize an entire deck of cards. Now, I can do it even faster. I just don’t know the order that the cards are in. That’s sort of a feeble attempt at humor. But in any event, using these mnemonics, these memory athletes, they compete in national and international events. The international one, they… call it a decathlon it’s usually held in in england and they have 10 different things where they’ll learn poetry they’ll memorize long numbers and the way they memorize long numbers they break them into chunks of like three numbers and then they will assign those numbers letters and then with the letters they’ll create little images for each group of three letters and so with these links they’re able to remember a lot of things. Something I’ve learned when I read the book is if there’s something you really have to remember to do The first thing tomorrow morning, and you don’t have a pen and paper handy, or you don’t have your cell phone handy, and you don’t want to mess with entering it in your to-do list, but you just want to remember it when you get up in the morning, take your lamp that you have at the side of your bed and put it in the middle of your kitchen sink where you brush your teeth. Not kitchen sink, your bathroom sink, where you brush your teeth. And I guarantee you, whatever you wanted to remember in the morning, once you see that bedside lamp in your bathroom sink, you will remember to call your brother. or to call your accountant, or to gas up your car before you go to whatever it is that you needed to remember, you will remember it. The more ridiculous you make an image like that, the more likely you will remember it, which is what these memory athletes do. They even demonstrated to me how people can learn long grocery lists. by creating what they call memory palaces. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say if you had to go to the store and you needed bread and English muffins. You also needed milk, yogurt, and sour cream. You needed steak and ground chuck. You needed pork chops and bacon. You also needed lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. You needed curry and pepper. You also needed toilet paper, paper towels, and dog food. That’s 18 items. Now, these memory athletes, what they do is they create a memory palace to help one remember all of those things. Those first two items, imagine you just pulled up to a farmhouse and you see a red double-decker bus like they have in London. And in front of that, you see waving grain. Those two images will help you remember to get bread and English muffins. At this farmhouse, you walk over to the first pasture, and you see a dairy cow, a Guernsey cow. That reminds you to get milk, yogurt, and sour cream. Next to that pasture is another pasture where you see King Charles lying on the ground with a stake through his heart like a vampire. That reminds you to get ground chuck and steak. Then you go to the pigsty. You see a sow there reminding you to get pork chops and bacon. Around the back of the farmhouse is a small garden, vegetable garden that reminds you to get lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. Then as you enter the front door of the farmhouse, you see a gentleman standing there and he’s dressed in Indian garb. He looks like he could live somewhere in India. And he also sneezes. That reminds you to get curry and pepper. And as you enter the farmhouse, because you had to use the restroom, you hear a dog bark and you accidentally knocked something over in the kitchen that you have to wipe up. Because you have to relieve yourself, that reminds you to get toilet paper. To clean up the mess reminds you to get paper towels. And having heard the dog bark, that reminds you to get dog food. Now, if you go through this exercise, you can probably remember these 18 items because of this memory palace we created. And rather than a memory palace, we could call this a memory farm because much of the things we get at the grocery store come from the farm. So this concept of mnemonics to help people remember things is the… fundamental basis of how we can learn things. I remember when I was in school, I memorized Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, I memorized the entire poem. And with poetry, it’s a little easier because of the rhyming and things like that. But you can also learn spelling and things like that by the rhythm of the word. Think about the word Mississippi. If you use kind of a little jingle, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, you can remember how to spell Mississippi. And by little jingles, you can remember how to spell other words like I before E except after C. A lot of words like believe, conceive, and so forth have I’s and E’s next to each other, and it’s difficult to remember how to spell them. And the end of that is or, like A, in neighboring way. So if there’s an I-N-E and it sounds like an A, that will help you to spell those words. So essentially, mnemonics… our mnemonics is that study of how we can memorize things. And keeping our memory sharp is going to help us keep it sharper in old age. And again, as I mentioned earlier, the enemy of having a sharp memory is routine. And what will really help us to maintain mental acuity as doing things that are different whether it’s different socialization take a ballroom dancing class go to yoga class even though if you’ve never done yoga before i jog in the morning over near stern park in downtown littleton and i see some people standing a considerable distance away, and they have these mats. And I realized it was an early morning, not that early, in the neighborhood of 8 o’clock, a morning outdoor yoga class, which looks like fun. There’s men and women, and they’re getting some exercise, exercising their brain, getting some socialization. And so a lot of things that we can do to keep our minds sharper. But again, the enemy of keeping our mind sharp is routine. And what really helps to keep our mind sharp is new experiences. The more new experiences that you can participate in, the more sharper your brain will become. again, I highly recommend this book, Moonwalking with Einstein. It gives a real clear idea of these memory athletes that compete in memorization of things. And the story that Joshua for, his name is Joshua, F-O-E-R, Moonwalking with Einstein. I’m sure you can find it on Amazon. It’s a very interesting read. Well, thank you so much, for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today’s show and God bless you and let’s continue to pray for the folks in Texas who have suffered that devastating flood and let’s pray for our leaders and hopefully you’ll be here next week and God bless you and talk to you next week. Bye now.
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Thank you for listening to Retirement Unpacked with your host, Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial. Set up a free consultation with Al today at klzradio.com slash money. Find your purpose in retirement with Golden Eagle Financial. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. VCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through VCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.
