Sue Pimento

My friend, Linda, retired at 66 after 35 years as a school principal. She had done everything right. Pension. Savings. No debt. A financial plan so airtight that her advisor framed it. On her first Monday of retirement, she drove to the grocery store, stood in front of the fancy olive oil, and put the $23 bottle back on the shelf. She grabbed the $10 one instead. That night, she called me, genuinely distressed. "Sue," she said, "I don't know how to spend the money." Linda is not alone. Her problem is not a math problem. It is a brain problem. Welcome to the neuroscience of aging and money, where biology is ageist, your prefrontal cortex is quietly retiring before you do, and the financial industry has somehow spent decades teaching you to save without ever explaining how to stop. What Is Actually Happening in That Brain of Yours As we age, the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and impulse regulation, starts to lose its edge. Meanwhile, the amygdala, the emotional centre, gains more influence. The result? Decisions that feel more emotional, more risk-averse, and sometimes more impulsive, depending on which way your wiring maps. Research published by Agarwal, S., Driscoll, J. C., Gabaix, X., & Laibson, D. found that financial decision-making peaks around age 53 and then declines steadily. This is not because older adults are less intelligent, but because the cognitive systems that weigh risk and reward begin to operate differently. Biology is ageist, as evidenced by the fact that your brain begins to change its relationship with money before you have even figured out what to do with it. A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that older adults are significantly more likely to make financial mistakes on both ends of the spectrum: excessive caution and excessive spending. The brain does not uniformly tighten the purse strings. It amplifies whatever pattern was already there. If you were a careful saver, you would become an Olympic penny-pincher. If you were a spender, you would become a one-person economic stimulus package. You become an exaggerated version of your younger self. Which is charming in theory and occasionally catastrophic in practice. Team Tight-Wad: All Chips, No Salsa You know the type. Actually, you might be the type. These are the people who still have their first chequebook, who compare per-unit prices for paper towels with the focus of a neurosurgeon, and who have not eaten at a restaurant without a coupon since the second Harper government. They are not cheap. They are terrified. As the prefrontal cortex loosens its grip on rational future planning, the fear of running out, what I call FORO (Fear of Running Out), takes the driver's seat. It whispers things like: what if the market crashes, what if I get sick, what if I live to 102 and run out of money at 99? And so the tight-wad doubles down. The $23 olive oil goes back on the shelf. The vacation gets postponed. The grandchildren's birthday gifts get slightly less grand. All chips, no salsa. You have built a pile of financial security and are sitting on it, stiff, virtuous, and mildly hungry, while the dip goes untouched. The tight-wad's greatest risk is not poverty. It is regret. Researchers at Cornell University found that people in the final chapters of their lives consistently reported regretting what they did not do far more than what they did. That trip not taken. That renovation not done. That bottle of good olive oil not purchased. FORO kept them safe and small, and the memory of that smallness stings. Team Spend-Thrift: All Salsa, No Chips On the other side of the spectrum, we have the spend-thrifts. As the emotional centres become more active and impulse regulation less reliable, some people lean into the "you only live once" philosophy. They book the trip to Portugal. They buy the golf club they do not need. They pick up the tab for dinner for eight people they met three hours ago. They are generous, spontaneous, and occasionally mystified by their bank statements. Research from Harvard Business School confirms that spending money on experiences and on others generates a meaningful boost in wellbeing. Spend-thrifts are onto something. The problem is sustainability. If the prefrontal cortex is not doing its job by asking "do we actually need this," the credit card bill arrives, and this is why we can't have nice things. Spend-thrifts also tend to underestimate longevity. A 65-year-old Canadian woman today can expect to live, on average, past 87. That is more than two decades of retirement to fund. All salsa, no chips is a delicious way to start a party and a terrible way to sustain it. The Gap Nobody Talks About: Permission to Spend Here is where I want to say something that gets almost no airtime in the financial services industry. We have an enormous education gap on this side of retirement. The entire financial industry, including the advisors, the institutions, the calculators, the seminars, and the books, has spent decades teaching people how to accumulate money. How to save. How to invest. How to sacrifice the latte. The message has been so relentless that it has rewired the way people feel about spending. And then retirement arrives. And nobody says: Okay, you can stop now. You can actually use this. This is what it was for. Switching from accumulation to decumulation requires real support, real education, and genuine permission. It is not a switch you flip. It is a gear shift that many people never make successfully. They arrive at retirement financially prepared but psychologically stuck. Honestly? The mother of all eye rolls is reserved for the financial institution that still calls it a savings account when you are 72. You are not saving anymore. You are managing a spending pool. Here is my modest proposal: once you turn 65, your savings account becomes your spending account. Not a radical rebranding. A psychological one. Words matter. Framing matters. Every time you log in and see the word "spending," your brain starts to normalize the idea that this money has a purpose, and that purpose is your life. Clients need financial therapists as much as they need financial planners. They need someone to look them in the eye and say: you earned this, you saved this, and spending it wisely and joyfully is not a failure of discipline. It is the entire point. Self-Awareness Is the Cheapest Investment You Will Ever Make Recognizing your pattern is step one. If you have not bought anything for yourself that was not on sale in the past calendar year, that is data. If you cannot remember the last time you checked your balance before a purchase, that is also data. Neither is a character flaw. Your brain is doing what it is supposed to do. Step two is to get the right support and give yourself explicit permission. A good retirement income specialist asks what you want your money to do for you now, not just how long it needs to last. A financial therapist helps you untangle your emotional history with money. At some point, you write it down: I am allowed to spend on things that bring me joy, keep me healthy, and connect me to the people I love. Post it somewhere you will see it when you are standing in front of the fancy olive oil. The Punchline Linda eventually bought the $23 olive oil. It took four months, a conversation with her advisor, and an honest chat with her daughter, who pointed out that Linda had about 90 jars of tomato sauce in her basement and no good reason to be rationing condiments. The brain changes that come with ageing are real. They are not personal failures. They are biology doing biology things, loudly and without your consent. But brains are also remarkably responsive to information, reframing, and the occasional kick in the pants from someone who loves you. You spent decades building financial security. The goal was never to die with the most money. It was a good life. All chips AND salsa. The full spread. The $23 olive oil on the good bread, with the people you love. Your spending account is waiting. Honestly, it has been waiting long enough. Because nobody wins a prize for being the richest person in the graveyard. Don’t Retire…Re-Wire! Sue

If you haven't read Seniors and AI (Part 1) What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, catch up here. My friend Gloria told me she asked her AI assistant what to do about a “sore knee,” and it suggested she might be experiencing “symptoms consistent with early-stage gout, possible DVT, or referred pain from lumbar stenosis.” Gloria is 74, lives alone, and spent the next three hours convinced she was dying. She was not. She had slept on the couch in an awkward position. This is Part 2 of our look at Seniors and AI. If Part 1 was about the laughs, Part 2 is where we put on our reading glasses and pay attention. When technology moves from ordering groceries to offering medical advice or emotional support, the stakes get considerably higher than an accidental pineapple on your pizza. AI and Medical Advice: The Good, the Bad, and the “You Googled What?” Let’s give credit where it’s due. AI genuinely helps in healthcare in meaningful ways. It’s available at 2 AM without judgment. It translates medical jargon into plain English. It can help you walk into a doctor’s appointment with better questions instead of the usual panicked stare. But here’s what it cannot do: see you, touch you, or notice you’re limping. It can’t smell an infection, hear the wheeze in your chest, or detect the subtle signs that something is wrong. At its core, it is an elaborate and very polite Google search. Not a doctor. Takita et al. (2025), in a systematic review and meta-analysis published in Digital Medicine, found that the overall diagnostic accuracy of generative AI models is about 52 percent. Read that again. Fifty-two percent. Suitable for a second opinion, nowhere near sufficient to replace an experienced clinician. And yet, we hear a confident-sounding response and think, “Well, the computer said so.” Confidence and correctness are not the same thing, a lesson most of us learned the hard way in our thirties. When AI Is Safe (and When It Is Decidedly Not) Go ahead and ask AI about: What does that lab term on your bloodwork actually mean Common side effects of medications you’re already taking Questions to bring to your next appointment General information about a health condition Do not ask AI about: Anything you’d describe as “just making sure it’s not something bad”? Chest pain, sudden numbness, or anything that begins with “I’ve never felt this before” Whether to stop taking a medication Whether your symptoms are serious enough to go to the ER Think of AI as the helpful intern, not the chief medical officer. You’d let the intern look something up for you, but you wouldn’t let the intern prescribe your blood pressure medication. Bottom line: if you wouldn’t trust your toaster to measure your blood pressure, don’t trust a chatbot to diagnose your heart. AI Therapy: Comfort or Catastrophe? Mental health chatbots promise empathy. Let’s be precise about what that means: they simulate compassion, not feel it. There is a difference, and it matters. A Stanford University study (Moore & Haber, 2025) warns that therapy chatbots can reinforce stigma or provide genuinely unsafe responses. They can’t detect tone, see tears, read a room, or call for help when things turn dark. This is especially concerning for older adults. Loneliness and depression are common among seniors and are routinely dismissed as “just slowing down” or “getting older.” That’s not aging. Those are invisible illnesses that deserve real attention and real human connection. The Signs We Miss According to the National Institute on Ageing’s 2025 Ageing in Canada Survey, 57 percent of Canadians over 50 report feeling somewhat or very lonely, and 43 percent are at risk of social isolation. These figures haven’t changed since 2022. This is not a fringe problem. It is a quiet epidemic hiding in plain sight. Watch for these signs in yourself and in the people you love: Pulling back from activities they once loved Sleeping too much or not nearly enough Loss of appetite or unexplained weight changes Talking nonstop when the company finally arrives (that’s hunger or severe loneliness, not chattiness) Inventing reasons to call or visit Self-deprecating humour that feels a little too real. Here’s a small but important piece of advice: don’t ask, “Are you lonely?” You’ll get a cheerful “Of course not!” Pride and independence run deep, especially among a generation that survived things we can’t imagine. Instead, act as if. Drop by with coffee. Ask for help with something they are well versed in. Bring the dog. Go for a walk. Sit quietly and watch a show together. Share a meal. Loneliness doesn’t always need a conversation. Sometimes it just needs to know someone showed up. What Your Elder Is Thinking (But Will Never Tell You) Tread carefully here. These thoughts tend to live in the quiet spaces between sentences, felt but rarely spoken. How much time do I have? Have I done enough? Will my money run out before I do? Will anyone remember me? Do I still matter? Why do I feel so sad? Why are my friends getting sick and slipping away? Will I get sick? Who will look after me? Do my children know I love them? What if I start to forget? The creeping fear of losing names, faces, the stories that make life feel like mine. Am I a burden? (This one usually hides behind a joke.) What if my best days are already behind me? Some of these will surprise you. Some won’t. Some will make you want to pick up the phone right now. That’s the right instinct. You don’t need to fix these feelings. Sometimes, sitting quietly with someone in the silence between their words is the most healing thing you can offer. For the Family: What to Watch For and What to Do A quick note for the kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and anyone who forwards funny videos to their grandparents: your elders are going to experiment with AI. Probably the same way you experimented with your first beer or a regrettable tattoo: curious, enthusiastic, and occasionally overconfident. Watch for these warning signs: Increasing withdrawal from real-world activities and people Confusion about what is real versus AI-generated Replacing actual conversations with chatbot exchanges Acting on AI medical or financial advice without verifying it with a professional Being secretive or evasive about what they’re doing online Here is what you can do: Connect regularly. Ask what they’re learning or laughing about. Create opportunities for in-person time. FaceTime counts in a pinch, but in-person is irreplaceable. Know when to call the doctor. Know when all they need is your time. Don’t lecture. Don’t infantilize. Just stay connected. The best firewall against the risks of AI is not better technology. It’s better relationships. The Real Threat: Replacing Connection Here is the uncomfortable truth. AI is tempting. It’s always available, never interrupts, doesn’t judge, and responds instantly without getting distracted by its own problems. For someone who feels lonely, invisible, or like a burden, that can feel like a lifeline. But it’s a false one. AI cannot hold your hand or share a meal. It can’t laugh at your jokes in a way that truly counts. It cannot offer the warmth of human presence, which is what we need most, especially as we age. The danger isn’t primarily that AI will give bad medical advice, though it might. The danger is that it will replace human connection altogether. And that is a problem no algorithm can solve. CTRL ALT DEL: Now Go Call Someone AI is a tool. Part marvel, part mistake, and entirely dependent on who holds it. Use it wisely. Enjoy the entertainment. Stay curious. And remember who is actually in charge. Technology will keep getting smarter. It will not get warmer. It will not hear the sound of your laugh, remember the story you’ve told seventeen times, or show up at the door with soup when you’re not feeling well. That is still us. That will always be us. So yes, let Gloria ask her AI about her knee. But let’s also make sure someone calls Gloria on Tuesday. Key Takeaways Use AI for information, not diagnosis or treatment. Stay alert to signs of loneliness in yourself and in the people you love. Stay genuinely connected with older family members and friends. When in doubt, choose the human over the algorithm. The greatest upgrade to AI isn’t a newer version. It’s showing up. Sue Don't Retire...ReWire! My Book is Now Available for Pre-Order I hope you will consider pre-ordering a copy of Your Retirement Reset for you, a friend or loved one. It's available September 8, 2026 You can now order on the ECW Press site here. And if you love supporting Canadian booksellers, please also check with your local independent bookstore. Most can easily order it for you.

Seventy There it is. Just sitting there. A number that tends to land somewhere between “good for you” and “are you feeling alright?” And before you answer that, let me tell you I am more than alright. I am thriving. Loudly. Definitely with dancing. And with just enough attitude to make a few people slightly uncomfortable, which I have decided is a sign of a life extremely well lived. But first, let me tell you about the plan. ⁂ The Plan Was Magnificent. It Lasted Eleven Minutes The plan was to retire gracefully. Ease into a slower pace. Read more. Maybe garden. Drink better wine. Finally, work through all those documentaries piling up in my queue with the quiet confidence of someone who had absolutely earned the right to nothing. Here is what actually happened. The documentaries stayed in the queue, and the garden did not get planted. I did, however, read one book. Just one. But it turned out to be exactly the right one. David Brooks wrote The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, and I picked it up the way you pick up something that does not look urgent, only to find you cannot put it down. Brooks argues that we spend the first part of our lives climbing what he calls the first mountain: the career, the credentials, the identity, the whole elaborate structure of proving ourselves. And then something happens. You reach the top, or you fall off, or the mountain turns out to be considerably smaller than it looked from the bottom. Either way, you end up in a valley, slightly winded, wondering what comes next. And that, Brooks says, is where real life begins. The second mountain. The one you climb not for yourself but for something greater. The one where the question shifts from “what do I want?” to “what does the world need from me?” I read that while sitting in my living room and thought: that is the whole story, right there. There is a phrase I use throughout this blog: try to keep up. I say it because seventy feels faster and fuller than I ever expected, and because it is an invitation, not a taunt. You still have tread on your tires. I mean that warmly. Try to keep up. ⁂ The Valley Was Not Optional My valley arrived without warning or invitation: I lost my job unexpectedly. No graceful wind-down. No farewell luncheon with a tasteful card, no parade! Just the particular silence that follows the end of something you had not quite finished. Nobody glides gracefully from mountain one to mountain two, no matter how it looks on social media. What nobody tells you about retirement, voluntary or otherwise, is that stopping is quite difficult. Not the logistics. The identity. You spend thirty years answering the question “What do you do?” and then one day no one asks anymore. We carefully plan the money. We almost never plan for the morning when your calendar is empty, your inbox is quiet, and no one expects you anywhere. That morning is its own kind of reckoning. Brooks calls this the valley experience, and he is right that it is unavoidable. It is where you shed the old self so a new one can emerge. There are no shortcuts. I tried several. But then I hired a coach. Not just any coach. A thought leadership coach, which sounds very impressive but turns out to involve a great deal of uncomfortable self-reflection and at least one conversation in which the coach tells you to write a blog. “Do your research,” he said. “Find your niche. Share what you know. And honestly, you should probably write a book.” (Thank you, Peter!) I nodded. I smiled. I thanked him warmly. Then I went home, sat down, and had a completely private, entirely dignified meltdown that I will describe only as spirited. Action absorbs anxiety, so once the spirited moment passed, I got to work. Try to keep up. ⁂ The Second Mountain Has a Name. It Is Retire with Equity I started writing. Article after article, something unexpected happened: I found my voice. It turns out my voice is part educator, part agitator, and part hilarious, where kitchen-table logic meets a spreadsheet. I began calling her Aunt Equity, and she has been absolutely delightful company ever since. A word on naming your alter ego after a financial product: no one recommends it. No self-help book has a chapter that says ‘step three, create a persona rooted in home equity solutions and give her a sassy name.’ And yet Aunt Equity arrived fully formed, with opinions, a logo, and an inexplicable amount of charisma. She is part brand, part character, and entirely my fault. I am keeping her. For Brooks, the second mountain is a calling, not a career move. For me, it is a community. The Canadian retirement community. The people who built this country, paid into it, raised children in it, and are now quietly panicking about whether they have enough to keep going. That community. They are my people, and this is my mountain and I have built my company, Retire with Equity to support it. And I will be honest: this mountain is considerably steeper and way more fun. Try to keep up. ⁂ What Is Your Second Mountain? Here is where this stops being about me and starts being about you. The second mountain is not one thing. It is not a prescription. It is not reserved for people who write blogs, build platforms, or have particularly spirited meltdowns. It is waiting for you, wherever you are, whatever you are carrying, whether you are fifty or seventy or somewhere in between and still not entirely sure you are allowed to want something new. The second mountain looks different for everyone, and that is entirely the point. Also, a feature, not a bug. For some people, it is family. Really showing up for grandchildren in ways that a demanding career never allowed. Being present, not just present-ish. Taking the grandkids to school on Tuesdays because Tuesday is your day now and the best day of the week. Becoming the person in the family who holds things together, not because you have to, but because you finally have the time and the wisdom to do it right. For others, it is community. A neighbourhood organization, a cause that has been pulling at you for years, or a faith community that needs exactly the skills you spent a career building. Brooks tells the story of a woman who was moving out of a rough Chicago neighbourhood, looked out the window, saw little girls playing with broken bottles in an empty lot, turned to her husband, and said: we are not leaving. She ended up running a major community organization. She did not set out to build a movement. She just decided not to look away. And then there are the callings that have been patiently waiting in the back of a drawer since approximately 1987. This is my personal favourite category because it is full of people who surprise themselves completely. Andrea, whom I see every week at the gym, spent her late fifties doing something most people her age were emphatically not doing: she went to law school. In London, England. A yearning carried for decades, quietly set aside while she built a career and raised a family. Then one day she stopped being polite about it and went. She is one of the most alive people I know. David discovered painting. Not dabbling. Painting. He picked up a brush at a class a friend dragged him to, and something clicked open that had apparently been waiting for that exact moment. He paints almost every day now, and the look on his face when he talks about it is that of someone who found something he did not know he had lost. If you are sitting there thinking you have left it too long, or that your moment has passed, that is a you problem, and I say that with complete affection. The door is still open. Walk through it. Brooks calls it the place where your deep gladness meets a deep hunger in the world. I think of it as the morning when you wake up and you are not just filling time. You are fulfilling a purpose. Try to keep up. ⁂ What Actually Works (And What Dottie Has to Do With It) I have a ten-pound dog named Dottie. She is the canine embodiment of purposeful living and, frankly, an unsolicited life coach. Full speed, tail up, no apologies. I take notes. The retirements that work, the ones people describe as genuinely meaningful rather than merely solvent, share a few things in common. They move. Consistently, enjoyably, sustainably. The body is not a liability to be managed in retirement. It is an asset, and it responds remarkably well to being treated like one. For me, part of that meant I needed a break from drinking, and the origin story is not glamorous: I woke up one morning and could not remember how the movie I watched the night before ended. That was the moment. What began as a one-month experiment quietly became almost two years. I sleep better, think more clearly, and no longer find myself wide awake at 2 am doing mental arithmetic about nothing. I feel sharper and more energized at seventy than I did a decade ago. The fifties, it turns out, were not the peak. They were the warm-up act. And for the record, I still cannot remember how that movie ended some mornings. Some things are beyond even sobriety. Physical vitality expands your options. Financial clarity reduces your dread. Purpose gives both of those things a reason to matter. Tend to all three. Not perfectly. Just intentionally. Dottie, for what it is worth, nails all three before anyone else in the house has had coffee. If she is the bar, she is not wrong to set it there. Try to keep up. ⁂ A Confession. Then a Celebration Almost five years into this accidental, exhilarating, occasionally terrifying reinvention, I still do not have it entirely figured out. The documentaries remain unwatched. I still cannot tell you how they end. What I do have is this: evidence, personal and otherwise, that the second mountain is real and better. Not easier. Better. Because when you are climbing toward something that matters beyond your own resume, the climb itself changes. The effort feels different. The setbacks feel survivable. And the view, when you get there, means something. You do not need to have it figured out before you start. You just need to take a step. Then another. Then hire a coach, have your spirited moment, and remember: action absorbs anxiety. Say the number out loud, whatever it is. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy. Say it. Then decide what it means, because that part is entirely up to you. The first mountain shows you what you are capable of. The second one shows you who you actually are. If you have not read David Brooks’ The Second Mountain, put it at the top of the list. The documentaries can wait. I have confirmed this from personal experience. The Friday night of my birthday week, there was an epic dance party at a local brewery, organized by my wife Bonnie, the woman I met on a dance floor thirty-three years ago and have been dancing with ever since. Bonnie deserves more than a shout-out here. She deserves a medal, a monument, and honestly, serious consideration for sainthood. For over three decades, she has lived with my schemes, my pivots, and my absolute certainty that each new thing is the thing. She has never once wavered. Bonnie is the reason any of this works, and the reason that dance floor was full of people who love me. I am, by any objective measure, an extremely lucky person. I am also aware that she will read this, so I want to be clear: yes, I mean every word, and no, this does not get me out of whatever I am currently scheming. The glow of that party remains, and I know I have truly arrived because there was even a party crasher. I named her Mona. Mona could not resist the pull of that much joy and some absolutely kickin’ eighties music. The story of Mona, the early thirties party crasher, is being reserved for another time, but know this: if your birthday celebration attracts a stranger named Mona, you are doing seventy exactly right. The second mountain, it turns out, has a very good playlist. And if you are worried you are not quite ready for it, or that the moment may have passed, I want to leave you with this: you still have tread on your tires. So does everyone in this community. And if you cannot keep up, at least come dance. You might surprise yourself. Just ask Mona. I am seventy. I am on my second mountain. Come find yours. Try to keep up. ⁂ Sue Don't Retire...Re-Wire! My Book is Now Available for Pre-Order I hope you will consider pre-ordering a copy of Your Retirement Reset for you, a friend or loved one. It's available September 8, 2026 You can now order on the ECW Press site here. And if you love supporting Canadian booksellers, please also check with your local independent bookstore. Most can easily order it for you.