Childfree Midlife Crisis

Picture this: Dr. Jay running a maple syrup farm and selling stuff on eBay because he had no clue what to do after achieving his goals. That’s exactly what happened when he hit the childfree midlife crisis - the time when you hit your personal, professional, & financial goals.

When working through this with clients, there’s no one-size-fits all guide for childfree folks facing this crisis. The episode takes a heartwarming turn as Dr. Jay puts Bri on the spot with three powerful life questions. Spoiler alert: it gets emotional, and you'll want to grab some tissues. The vulnerability is real as they explore dreams, regrets, and the changes needed to live a more fulfilled life.

​​The Childfree Wealth Podcast, hosted by Bri Conn and Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®, is a financial and lifestyle podcast that explores the unique perspectives and concerns of childfree individuals and couples. With new episodes each week, you’re bound to gain new information & insight to help you in your life and financial planning journey.

Resources:

+ Podcast: I’ll Make You Quit Your Job

+ Podcast: Unpacking Money Guilt

The Childfree Wealth Podcast, hosted by Bri Conn and Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®, is a financial and lifestyle podcast that explores the unique perspectives and concerns of childfree individuals and couples.

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Transcript

Dr. Jay

Hey Childfree Wealth listeners. This week we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics to talk about and I actually do mean favorite and it's the childfree midlife crisis. Now, I don't want you think about this as a certain age. It can happen to anyone at any age. And it's really what happens when you hit your personal, professional and financial goals.

I mean, like, now what? Have you seen this Bri or have you experienced it? Am I crazy on this concept?

Bri

I have definitely seen this with different clients. They get to a certain point and they're like, I've done all these things, but I don't know where to go from here. And can you help with that? Yes, we can help with it to point & ask questions. But that's also going to take a lot of internal reflection to kind of figure out what is next for you, because our answers might be different than yours.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And by the way, with clients, we had to hold up a mirror and working through it with them. But I think the hard part of this is the standard life plan says you go to school, you get married, you buy a house, you have kids, work 25 years, pass money on to the next generation. And if you hit your personal, professional financial goals as a parent, you just shift your goals to your kids.

And I'm not going to say that's right or wrong, that just there's a whole separate discussion on that, but that's a natural thing. And the difference for childfree folks is we hit that and we're like, well, what's next in life? You know, what's our legacy? What's our impact? Was it like big hard questions we're talking about, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like self-actualization and all this crazy stuff.

And I hit this now a little before 40, and I had done all the great goals and my wife and I embrace the gardener & the rose. We said, alright, she'll be the rose now. And I had to try to find myself and actually ended up running a maple syrup farm for a while and selling stuff on eBay and Amazon and just running a tractor and doing weird things.

And I did that because I had no clue what I wanted to do. Somebody asked you, what is a dude with a Ph.D. doing selling stuff randomly online? I'm like, Well, because I got to make some money, but like, I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life because I've always been a goal driven person.

And now, like, you hit the goals. It's like the dog that caught the car, you know, like, now what? And I think the hard part of this is there's not… I don't know, at least I haven't found a great like here's the next step guide that, you know, talks about what to do next. I joke with clients. I ask them, What do you want to be when you grow up?

But I don't know. Nobody's ever asked me that. So what's your advice when you kind of like dig into this? Because you’re much better at work life balance than I am.

Bri

Yeah. I was not a result of anything about hitting a crisis. It was a result of trauma. It's very the way I came about that was just very different.

Dr. Jay

Alright. So let me tell you how I work through this with clients. The first step is we go through all their finances and go, you're okay. And now, by the way, they usually fight because they're like, no, I'm not. But what if this and what if, you know, the world comes to an end? Or what if I'm like, yeah, if it comes to that, we've got bigger problems than your finances, but we find a place where they're stable and then we go, alright, now what do you want to do?

Now we did an episode on I'll Make You Quit Your Job, and as one of our top listened to episodes, because that literally is where we're getting to at this point. And I often talk about it as an encore career. You kind of take a bow, take a curtain call and then pick out your next thing in life.

I think part of the problem is for many of us, we are following a path that the 18 year old version of us, the stupid version was like three years ago, if you believe it, like the rest of us. That was like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever. But the 18 year old version of us picked where we went to school, picked our job, picked what we're going to do, and we're still doing it and we get so stuck and you got to keep doing it.

You know, I had somebody. I went to school to be a nurse. Good. Did you enjoy nursing? Yeah, but I'm getting tired of it. Okay, let's change it. Well, but I went to school to be a nurse. I'm like, no. Like, we have to challenge this, because if you hit this at 30, 40, whatever it is, you got 40 or 50 years left in your life.

Do you want to keep doing the stuff you don't enjoy for the rest of your life with that?

Bri

Like, how do you if you're a soloist… It's much easier, I think, when I see couples for couples to know one another person has hit it and push them. But as a soloist, how do you identify when you've hit that and really take the jump versus just sitting and sitting in it?

Dr. Jay

It's kind of like I've done it. And then like that is kind of going through the motions, by the way. Yes. There's there's a measure of privilege here that, yes, you can take another career and do that. You have to be in a decent financial place to do that number. But I said, you hit your personal, professional financial goals like you've hit the goals.

What do I do next? And I think people are not great at judging themselves. Let's call that out. I've been reading a lot lately on the Spotlight Effect, which is this concept that we think people think about us a lot more than they do. The reality check is everybody's in their own little world, you know? Yes, the internet's amplified it, but most people don't care about you throughout the day. They're not thinking about you. But we have this internal monologue that's running this as that. And I think most people also realize something's not right. But then they go, well, can I change it? So we work with clients. We're often holding up a mirror to them and going, here's what you say you want. Here's what you're doing. Let's go and shift this.

So I had somebody recently and they wanted to move to another area, like cool lets do it. And they're like, well, I can't. Why not? Well, I have X, Y and Z and I'm like, those are all excuses. Let's get past that. Well, I can't afford it. No, you can. I'm your planner. I’m your Childfree Wealth Specialist here. I'm helping you. And I'm like, you're good. And then their head explodes because, like, wait, I can? And I think that when you hit the childfree midlife crisis, you might need something from the outside to kind of give you that kick in the butt. So if you're a soloist, it might be somebody else. If it's a couple often we get middle couples and we'll see the garden and the rose and the gardener knows when the rose needs to do something, but they can't see it.

And sometimes we, as the third party, just go, listen, you just said this, do this. And it's you know, there's actually a thing in financial planning. They call it giving permission for giving people permission to change and do something different. And I think the culture and everything else pushes us to stay where we're at.

Bri

That's a good point. There have culture telling you that you need to stay where you are because a lot of us have grown up where you do something, you commit to it for years and years and years, and if you change it, it's frowned upon and people will say, oh, well, that person can't just hope that person can't hold a job, or they're always doing different things and kind of like those negative attitudes, which none of that might be true is just whatever you were doing wasn't right for you, and that's okay to change those.

But there's still that… those stereotypes out there saying that, well, if you change and make different choices that are better for you and better for your happiness, they're not right, quote unquote, according to society.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And we have a whole episode on money guilt that goes into a lot of this. I think this is where when you hit the childfree midlife crisis, the voices in your head get really loud like you did all this. You've got to keep doing it. Or like I had somebody else there moving up the executive ladder, had an opportunity for another position.

And I'm like, alright, you don't need that money financially. They said, well, but that would be a higher salary. I'm like, yes, it would. You don't need it because you're trying to die with zero. They said, yeah, but how can I pass that up? Real simple. You say, no, but that's where people are. Like what? Like, you know, if you're in the childfree midlife crisis when it comes to jobs, I want you to ask a question of what would you do for free?

And then, by the way, get paid for it if you wouldn't take that promotion to do the job for free, don't take it and put it in people's heads.

Bri

Yeah, it does. And I think it's because we're told to never do anything for free, you know, unless it's like volunteer work for a charity or doing it to help somebody. But we can often forget that it's okay. We're not telling you to literally do the job for free. We're telling you you should enjoy it, that you'd want to do it regardless.

Dr. Jay

Yeah, but if the answer is you want to retire and sit in a beach, do it. But then what? You know, people say, I want to retire. I go, Well, you know what? You're dying from. What you want to retire to? By the way, childfree folks tend to dim down versus retire, but whatever it is you want to go open the cupcake shop.

Open the cupcake shop. But here's the problem. Bri, I think you and I both suffer from being overachievers a little bit. Is that fair?

Bri

Yes. I don't like when he pokes his button, but I know it's the button that needs to be poked.

Dr. Jay

The fun of being overachievers is we've all always won the Gold Star. My parents taught me if you don't do anything to be the best at it, that messes with my head all time. Because when you hit the childfree midlife crisis, you can actually stop chasing the stars and being the over achiever. How are you going to do that?

Bri

I think it's I don't know. It's hard for me. I have a lot of things like I want to do. Like I could be out hiking all day. I could be, you know, working out a lot. I like having time to just go do workouts and not have to worry about rushing through them. I love swimming, but just like I'll use this example from recently.

So I was out helping my sibling farm and I was driving grain cart and I completely overshot the truck and just shot green out the other side. If you've never been on a farm, you have the grain cart, which is why you put the corn in to from the combine, combine, harvest it, and then you put in the grain cart and then you drive it to the semi and load it into the hopper trailer.

Well, you have to line it up perfectly to get all in there. And green carts, the specific one that my family has holds 60,000lbs of corn and it can very, very quickly get all of that out and into the tractor. I overshot it and made a huge mess on the ground. And it in my mind, that overachieving mind is like, no, I'm not good at doing this.

I can't ever do this because I made a mess. It happens to everybody. You see, corn spilled everywhere. It could be fixed, but that is a much simpler solution. Then when it comes to our overall life. Like I think those small things can add up to our entire life as well. So… Am I making any sense to you?

Dr. Jay

You’re making sense because here's the problem. It's how pervasive goals and getting the gold star becomes in our life. And by the way, I see this in relationships. People are like, I have to have the best relationship with my spouse. No, you don't. You have to. One, you enjoy. And by the way, it's going to be good, bad, ugly.

Yeah. The best I've ever heard about marriage is I still love you. I don't like you right now. Like, I'm like, all right, that's fair. Like, seriously, you won't have those moments. Doesn't mean we're failing in our marriage, but. But we have these things that we take as failures. And that's the problem with this childfree midlife crisis.

We're like, But if I'm not doing my job, A who am I? And B, what are what's my goals? And C, huh? Like there's no script for that. And for the people that are overachievers, which by the way, is a lot of people, I have to shift them to another goal, something for people that are less goal driven, which is very rare.

I had somebody for my book was embracing FILE in his mid-forties and literally was going to take his time and just do gaming full time and he was good without any more goals. I'm jealous of him because I would love to do that too. I just can't. I could take one day a week and do fun stuff. By the second day on a weekend, I'm back to work, you know, and I have to reprogram that and I have to put it in a different direction.

Bri

This is the whole hobby thing.

Dr. Jay

Now, that was in another episode where I was trying to find a hobby. But I think the hard part is if I find a hobby, I want to be the best at it. Again, if you're going to hike, you're doing times and like hiking harder things.

Bri

Back of the pack. No, I'm not. I really don't do it for that because if you're setting out to make a record time for a hike, you're missing all the things around you. So for me, I just want to talk to everybody. That's my thing. I just want to talk to everybody I'm with and see the gorgeous views.

Dr. Jay

By the way, talking to everybody on a hike is my seventh circle of hell.

Bri

That’s fair.

Dr. Jay

That’s the difference between us.

But like, that's I think what ends up happening with the childfree midlife crisis is you have to rethink what's important to you. So then it becomes a question of legacy for a lot of people. So I've been going through this a lot with myself and we're working through Childfree Wealth, where we're serving a lot of folks.

It's about 50 million childfree people in the U.S. If we do things very well, we can serve 1000 or 5000 or 10,000. I know very few out of that. But you know what? That can be my legacy of creating a financial planning process for childfree folks. And that really is why I'm working more than the money.

I’m starting my own business, you actually start your own business. You make very little, okay, that's just kind of part of it. And we're actually building a company where we're trying to hire people, where getting the money is not the primary thing. It's more the mission and mission driven and the focus on helping people. And that's a completely different way of thinking, but not everybody's there.

And the hard part is all those voices in our head say, well, but you could make more money if or you could do this, but if you're trying to die with zero, that money is worthless.

Bri

That is very true. And I think we need a… there's a bit of privilege that comes with the ability to do to do things and not have to worry about the money that comes with it. We just need to flat out acknowledge that.

Dr. Jay

Absolutely. I think the hard part there is like we're trying to answer like the tough life questions, know what's the meaning of life? What are we doing? What do we enjoy? What makes us happy? I talk about Marie Kondoing your life, getting rid of the things that don't bring you joy and doing more things that you do to enjoy but people don't like, like stop and ask that question.

Here's some tools. One of the tools I like using with my clients, and I'm not going to ask previous questions publicly because they’re actually embarrassing.

Bri

They’re not embarrassing questions you can ask them to me.

Dr. Jay

You want me to ask them?

Bri

Sure, I'll answer them. I will answer them as as much as I'm publicly comfortable with.

Dr. Jay

All right. I'm going to put Bri through an exercise. You can watch this and we'll see where it's going to go. There's three life questions we like to ask. They come from George Kinder. And the first question is, imagine that you have all the money you need for now and in the future. What would you do with your life? Dream big kind of. What would you do if you could do anything? And money didn't matter.

Bri

Yeah, I would be traveling a lot more. I would spend the spring and fall like planting and harvest season back with my sibling helping them because I think that's really fun and just going around seeing different parts of the world that I've always wanted to see. I would take my friends with me. I've got a couple of friends and we have talked about this, my wife and I, as at a certain point we would like to be able to pay to take friends with us on vacations and doing that would be a ton of fun for me because I, I love being people, so I want to go with them different places and just really prioritize my family and my friends and those relationships and seeing and learning new things.

Dr. Jay

Okay. So now I take away that money you've got the money you've got. Now you go to your doctor and the doctor says, hey, I'm sorry, but you only have five years left to live. What would you do?

Bri

I would probably continue to work just a little bit, just to give me some sort of structure with my time. I would still definitely prioritize family. I would likely move and no longer be living where I'm living, or at least not full time anyway. Be kind of living in different places and just spending. I would not work any of the planting or the harvest season.

I think in my ideal life I just don't work. Don't work then anyway. I would much rather be out in the fields in the plains, because I think that's just fun and I've always loved that, but I've never really talked about that before and just I got some kiddos in my life that I love and I would love to be able to go to their concerts and see those things and see their singing even though we all know children, singing is not that great, but it's so cute to watch and their soccer games going to things like that would be really important for me.

Dr. Jay

So the third question is you go to the doctor and he says, sorry, I made a mistake. You've got 24 hours to live. The question is, what do you get? What did you not get to do? What do you not get to be?

Bri

I think I would regret not spending as much time with people important to me because I haven't. I still prioritize them quite a bit, but I still haven't spent the time that I want to spend with them and probably regret not having like a… gol dang, I migh be in tears with this one. Oh, probably regret not having a wedding party and having everybody together.

Dr. Jay

So in light of those three questions, what do you need to do differently today?

Bri

I do not think I would actually be this emotional. Oh, I will probably schedule the wedding party.

Dr. Jay

By the way, don't forget to invite me. Yeah. Now, by the way, we've used this question of clients all the time through simple. You got all the money in the world, five years, you live 24 hours. And then I ask a fourth question, which is, okay, what do you need to change? And for everyone listening, if you haven't checked out, each of you need to watch Bri's reactions.

You'd actually go watch the video on this because it's a rollercoaster and it's the tough questions in life. Those are the questions that will help you understand what you need to do for the future. What I just heard of out of Bri and this is my interpretation. So just go with it is we need to get her more time with her family and the people that matter to her.

Bri

Yeah, we've had a lot of conversations about that too, and like how important that is to me.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And by the way, your answers might be that might be something completely different. Yeah, I've asked the questions. So one of the interesting ones and if you listen to this, you might want to just pause and journal your answers and work through this. If you got a couple, you can actually each do the questions individually and then you can do them together.

I’ve had a lot of people, it's really interesting when I go to what would you do if you had five years left? I actually see them like sit back, relax and like a weight came off their shoulders, like, all right, coo, now I get to do some fun stuff and I'm like, what? Like, I just took essentially killed you off and you're excited about that.

That tells me what they're living right now is bothering them that much. By the way, these questions like you, when you use them, you'll see it's hard. And then when you ask the question about what did you change? Now two things will happen. Either people go, dammit, I need to fill in the blank and I'll do the wedding ceremony or something.

Or the other one is, oh, I need to earn more money. And I'm like, where the heck did that come from? Like, that was nothing on your list. And what it is, that's a defense mechanism about not making the changes they actually make. I think the hard part is you need in this chapter for midlife crisis, you need kind of a kick in the butt.

Yeah. For me, I was on a tractor, got a text from an old friend from high school that one of our friends we grew up with had died of cancer. And I was early forties and the first friend that died from high school of cancer like boy boy did that hit me. I was like, well, I guess I need to do something different.

And I figured out I actually rather than worrying about my goals. I could just help other people get to their goals, and I do enjoy that. I truly do bring those. I actually probably dig in too much. You know, our clients, I intentionally have them meet us once a month because they can only handle so much. My employees, my staff, Bri, she gets it every day.

So like we get constant growth, constant pushing toward your goals. It's probably too much. But that was my I have a feeling, by the way, Bri, you might be looking back at this podcast as your ah-ha.

Bri

Maybe, yeah. I’ve talked about doing the wedding party and I have family members who are like hey we’ll host will I set it all up? So probably just call them and say let's schedule it.

Dr. Jay

It's interesting, if you do the exercise yourself, you almost can't lie to yourself in it. And that's why by having a friend go through it with you is great. Or, you know, if you want, we can help you through it or whatever it is. But I think that childfree midlife crisis, people like, reality check is they need to make a change like five years ago. But today is the day they're doing it. And then what'll happen is after you do that, you'll be freed up for something else like, Oh, I want to go open my cupcake shop. You open the cupcake shop over a couple of years and then you're like, nope, what I really want to do, this is my type of job, not yours.

During the summer, you go into the woods and sit in a fire tower and just watch for fires for a summer you your books and just hang out like sounds awesome. Bri says that sounds terrible.

Bri

I do it for a day, but that's about it. But there’d need to be a fire happening.

Dr. Jay

Now, but like, let's do something completely different to allow you to do that. The other trick on this one, I love power in groups. Great question. You say, hey, if you could do any job in the world and it doesn't matter what you get paid, what would you do? And people come out of it with different things. I want to be a boat captain.

What would you be, Bri?

Bri

I want to, like, have a foundation to help people pay for some new lessons, learn how to swim.

Dr. Jay

Alright, she's going to open a foundation. I'm going to be like Captain Lee on below deck. I'm going to be the crotchety old man running the boat. The best answer I ever heard was, I want to be the bartender at a bar. Like, you know, that's a pretty good job, you know? But then what you ask, asking the party, as you say, okay, so why aren't you doing it now?

Bri

That messes with people.

Dr. Jay

Well, this is why I don't get invited to parties, because I actually will ask this question at a bar and like, the whole vibe of the room starts dying down. And I'm like, do you not want to have real conversations? You know, I'm an introvert. We don't care. A small talk, but we'll have deep conversations like let's go.

And people like, I don't know, and then they'll start throwing out excuses or whatever else. And I'm like, oh, if that's a life you want to live, let's go do it. That's the opportunity for the childfree midlife crisis. If you actually hit your financial goal, the virus doesn't matter if you want to go open a foundation and save seals, I don't know.

I'm making it up. I'm going to the next foundation like you can or do whatever that what matters to you. And by the way, it doesn't have to be a huge impact. You don't have to like change the world. You could just travel the world. You don't have to write the next great novel. But you can. You know, you need to figure out what matters to you.

Now, the fun. One of this one, when I dig into the childfree midlife crisis, often find people that like childhood, kind of like I wish I was. I was like, well, let's go to that. I want to be an astronaut, little old and fat to do that. But, you know, like you yeah you can sometimes the or if you have a belly actually somebody point out there actually is that now an adult space camp I'm like you know like I'm kind of like you know…

Bri

You’ve got to sign up for it.

Dr. Jay

It whatever it is you could try something and then go no, I don't want to do that one you out. There's anything you can do but you need to get out of the slump. You need that royal kick in the butt to do it. Now, by the way, that is one of my favorite things to do to people.

So feel free. You need a good kick. I'm happy to do that one. I try to talk about bouncing between patting you on the back and kicking you in the butt. Kicking you in the butt is the fun one.

Bri

He enjoys that a lot.

Dr. Jay

Okay do I push them in their direction or in my direction?

Bri

You push them in the direction they need to go off, like. Yeah.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And by the way, it's different for every client. I just hope a mirror. I'm like you said, you want this. Let's go do that. And then I'm like, well, no, I didn't really mean I really want to do that, by the way. Now I'm going to follow up with Bri and make sure she's getting her party done.

I'm not kidding. Like Bri knows, I literally will ask her about this next week.

Bri

Yeah.

Dr. Jay

If she did it publicly on a podcast. Alright, like. But this is what happens. And what we need is that gentle nudge or that kick in the butt to do it, to figure out what the next 40 years of our life are going to look like. Don't just stay in the childfree midlife crisis. Do something.