2048: The Midlife Plot Twist - and How to Deal

Today's episode is for anyone who has ever stood in the vitamin aisle reading about the exact right creatine dosage for a woman "in this stage of life" and thought... okay but where's the aisle for my retirement savings? I'm right in the thick of this myself. Midlife money is basically all I want to talk about lately, because I think we are the forgotten demo. There's an entire industry telling us how to optimize our sleep, our supplements, our skin. But when it comes to actually managing our money at this stage, when the stakes are higher and the runway to retirement is shorter, the advice mostly dries up. So I'm thrilled to have Lindsay Goldwert here. She's the co-author, with Gabrielle Moss, of The Midlife Plot Twist, and she's spent a lot of time talking to women about the money moment we're in right now: the shame, the catching-up, the marriages where one partner has quietly been steering the ship, the total reinvention some of us are doing in our forties and fifties. Lindsay, welcome to So Money. How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey https://www.jotform.com/build/262556781257063 and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:53Speaker 03

  If you haven't hit these prescribed milestones, that you are not a failure. Right. You know, and that your life may not have gone the same as other people's lives. And you have to be okay with that. Your milestones might be, have been like, I just want to get away from, you know, get out of my hometown. I want to be able to always, you know, pay my own rent. You know, I always wanted to, you know, have a, you know, own and take care of a dog. Like, the things that you are proud of, like, let those be some of the milestones that you hit. Don't let anyone tell you how you're supposed to live your life. You have created a beautiful and unique and weird life. You did it, a lot of it on your own, with no script, no help, no real guidance counselor. My guidance counselor was completely out to lunch, you know?

• 2:38Speaker 03

  And just, you just have faith in the fact that you didn't make every wrong decision with your finances.

• 2:44Speaker 04

  Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Torabi, and today we have a show dedicated to anyone out there who has ever stood in the vitamin aisle, reading about the exact right creatine dosage you need in this stage of life, and thought, okay, but where's the aisle for how to retire early? I'm in the thick of this myself, everybody. Midlife is basically all I want to talk about lately, because I think we are the forgotten demographic. There is an entire industry telling us how to optimize our sleep, our supplements, our skin. But when it comes to actually managing our money, and our careers, and our sanity at this stage, when the stakes are really high, and the runway to retirement is getting shorter, the advice mostly dries up.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  So I'm thrilled to invite back on the show today, Lindsay Goldwert. She's the co-author, with Gabrielle Moss, of a new book called The Midlife Plot Twist. It comes out in September, but we've got her extra early to give us the insights. She has spent a lot of time talking to women about the money moment that a lot of us are in right now. The shame, the catching up, the marriages where one partner has quietly been steering the financial ship, the total reinvention some of us are doing in our 40s and 50s. Here's Lindsay Goldwert.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Lindsay Goldwert, welcome to So Money again. It's so great to see you and have you on the show. And of course, my favorite topic, the topic du jour in my life, midlife and money. Thank you for writing your book.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  I am so happy to be here. It's always such a pleasure to see you, and I can't wait to get into it with you.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  The Midlife Plot Twist: How to Reboot Your Life Without Burning It Down, Even If You Really, Really Want To. Do you know that I've used this expression quite often when I talk about? When people ask me, well, how's work going? I'm like, you know, some days are great, and some days I just want to burn it to the ground. And I

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a

• 4:39Speaker 04

  I thought it was so original with that, with that statement. But no, apparently it's on a book cover, which maybe means that I'm on to something. Like, maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way. Why do we feel this way in midlife, that we want to just pull the cord? Like, retire early, please, someone help us.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  You know, we did this big survey of over 150 women from all over America, and in some parts of, I think, Canada and all over the world. And I think some shocking amount of women, I think like 80% have thought about burning it down. And I think they all had different ideas of what that meant. Some people commented, leave my, leave my family and start anew. Some people said, quit my job and open a bakery. Some people said, yeah, just redo all my decisions, you know? But it was a fantasy that everyone imagined, just getting away from their responsibilities, and also being free to fantasize about that without feeling guilty. Because we're all like, oh, I should be grateful.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  You know, some people have it worse. And our philosophy is, your fantasies are your own. Fantasize away, and maybe your fantasies will inform some decisions about what you actually want.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  So is it more about burnout and arriving at a place in your life where you feel like you've just been, you're just tired? Or is it deeper than that? Like, is it about how maybe we have followed a script in life, especially as women? We play by the rules, we play by a certain set of rules, many of us. There are expectations of us. And then we get to like, the 40s, and we're like, F it, I'm burning this down. You know, what is, what have you learned from your interviews about kind of the backstory to this point in their life where they just feel like so done?

• 6:29Speaker 03

  I think so. Me and my co-writer Gabrielle Moss, we both had this idea that we make all our biggest life decisions when we're in our early 20s, when we have the least data about who we are. And all we have, the only things that inspired us were TV shows, magazine articles, the movies. And we made these decisions like, oh, that sounds like a cool career. You know, Law & Order looked like a cool show, maybe I'll be a lawyer, you know? Or Carrie Bradshaw was killing it as a columnist, you know? So maybe I'll go into journalism, you know?

• 7:06Speaker 03

  And then we follow these paths, and we stake so much of our, of our personal worth on our careers. And then time goes by, and then we hit our 40s, and we might start to think, maybe I made a terrible mistake. I don't, I don't, I don't like being a lawyer. Being a journalist was not a great idea. I'm, I know being a doctor is, is not what I thought it would be. But there's so much sunk cost in this, you know? It's like, well, I've already put in 20 years. To change now would be to be admitting failure.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  So, and we're so hard on ourselves, of course. The first part of the book is all about identity, and to just, and forgiveness. It's like, you didn't know. Stop beating yourself up. You didn't know, there wasn't even the internet when a lot of us were growing up. So we didn't even know what else was out there. There were no people saying, you know, this might be the downside to this, or not as advertised. So there's so much, we wanted everyone to say like, hey, you know, you have changed. Your decisions weren't the wrong ones. You made the best decision that you could have made at the time, and you just have to forgive yourself. We were making decisions based on, we wanted to get out of our hometown. We wanted to have financial stability for the first time in our lives. We maybe fell in love and moved to a city, you know?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  There's all these things that are, that informed our biggest decisions when we're the youngest. And we just didn't know any better. There, no one gave us a crystal ball. No one told us when recessions would come. No one told us that marriages, you know, flame out. And I think a lot of us arrived saying like, what happened? You know, and not that it's all bad, but enough of things. We're just thrown for a loop and we're like, how did this happen? Like, you may ask yourself, how did I get here?

• 8:54Speaker 04

  How did I get here?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  How did I get here?

• 8:56Speaker 04

  I think the biggest permission that your book gives, one of the biggest permissions, is to say, it's not that you would change anything. I mean, what, like to your point, we had, we did, made the best choices presumably with the information that we had at the time. And that's called good decision making for the most part.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  It's to say you have permission to change. You have permission to listen to the voices in your head, to an extent. You know, like if our voices are telling you, I don't like this job, or I'm tired, or I'm not enjoying the things that I used to enjoy. Those are valid feelings and they need to be examined. Your book largely looks at career and money, which I'm so appreciative of, you know, in this midlife span of time. Cause so often I joke, like I have 100 articles in, you know, tabbed on my computer about, you know, menopause and the right kind of creatine I should be consuming and how much protein I should be consuming.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  But like, what about, well, how do I actually optimize my retirement account right now? How do I actually make pivots in my career in my 40s and 50s without, you know, burning it down, to so to speak? And so why did you want to make like the money and the career stuff so much of the book, so much of the centerpiece of the book for a book about midlife as opposed to love, career and health? Cause you've written about love, career and health. Like you, you could have picked any topic, but you wanted to specifically focus on the money stuff.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  I focused on, my co-writer and I have, you know, different strengths. I focused on sex and money, which are my two favorite topics. And I'm a sex writer and also a money writer. And Gabrielle focused a lot on boundaries, how to set them with your family and friends. And just, and a lot of dealing with friendships and all that stuff. So we tried to cram a lot in there. I was very passionate about, as I'm always passionate about money and career, because it's tied with so much shame and feelings of failure. You know, if people, you know, Gen X, you know, elder millennials and Gen Xers, you know, we take on so much and we start to feel like if things didn't go as planned, then we failed. And if we don't have enough money in our retirement accounts, we failed, you know,

• 11:14Speaker 03

  and we can't, if we're not measuring up to what's in the T-Row price, you know, pamphlet, you know, we failed. And, you know, we're just inundated with so many people telling us that we're doing it wrong, or that these people retired early. And I think it's warped our sense of where we should be. And what our milestones should be. I wanted, you know, milestones are really important because we're all falling short. Because the milestones, who says that these are our milestones? These milestones are like 1950s era milestones. It's like, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes new house, then comes children, then comes, you know, nothing, because no one cares about a woman's life after they have children, you know?

• 11:57Speaker 03

  And then cut to like blank, blank, blank, and then retirement, you know? So that leaves massive blanks for us, you know, after we have children. And not all of us have children, obviously. So that's a whole milestone that is another question mark for a lot of us. A lot of us have kids later in life, where all those years are supposed to be, you have no goals, you have no milestones, you know? There's nothing that's important to you.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  You're just changing diapers.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. You're just, you're just planning on having children, changing diapers, you know? I don't know what, you know, what they think that women do in between, you know,

• 12:35Speaker 03

  having children or not having children or building a career. It's just, these milestones are very demented and we wanted to, because we're all, as I was saying, we're all failing. None of us have enough money in our retirement accounts. And if you do, that's amazing and congratulations. And that's wonderful. I don't mean that sarcastically. I mean, that is wonderful. Like, but a lot of us just didn't. A lot of us had to kind of dip into our 401ks during the pandemic. A lot of us did not have a straight road at our employment. A lot of women do take time off to raise their kids. A lot of us were laid off for various times in our life and had to go freelance. You know, things, things affect our, our retirement in a way that we didn't expect them to affect our retirement. And we look at our, our IRAs and we think to ourselves, like, God, you know, I'm going

• 13:19Speaker 03

  to end up living in a van down by the river, clearly, you know?

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Well, and not to mention, you, you point in your book that we have a unique amount of debt between 40 and 60. I think something like the average debt load is over $158,000. There's also the reality of getting pushed out of your job because you quote unquote, age out, you know, there is age discrimination in, in, in the career world. You become too expensive for an employer. And, and so in lieu of living in the van down by the river, um, let's talk about some of the pivots and some of the plot twists that you found really refreshing and doable in your research.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  I think in terms of pivoting, the biggest thing that we thought of is just, first of all, forgiveness, you know, which is very hard for us to do. We can never forgive ourselves for not having done everything perfectly. So just getting right with yourself and looking at your numbers. What is the reality of your numbers? And then that, it's not compromising, but just really getting real about your goals. And are, and are your goals like, I just want to live by the beach. Okay, maybe that's your goal. It's like, okay, well, how far from the beach? Like getting real specific about, is it that you want to live, you know, living by the beach can mean anything, you know? Does it mean you want to live near, you know, live in, you know, live in Miami, which might be more expensive than living in North Carolina, you know?

• 14:51Speaker 03

  Do you just want to, do you always want to own your home? Or do you not care so much? Do you always want to, do you never want to be, like all these emotional stuff? I'm very big into feelings and finance because the feelings that inform all, most of our decisions. So it's, you know, what do you need to have versus what would be cool to have? And I think once you start to really look back at that stuff and suddenly your life can, a lot of people say, I don't have any friends. I say, I just want to like have a yacht. I just want to retire, you know, to the Maldives. People are just like, I just want, we all start with, I just want, I just want a little cottage by the sea. I just want like a little space to call my own. I just want to like live.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  And it's like, when you say we just want, like we are talking about the things that our heart wants, you know? Like we just want privacy. We want to not be so far from our friends. We want to not be alone in our, you know, in our later years. We want to have peers around us. We always want someone to go to the movies with. These all sound silly, but they're not. And these are things that you can, can start to, to help you form your financial decisions. Like I know that I need to retire around friends. I don't have children. I need to be around people. And that's already changing the way I'm looking at retirement, whether I stay in my, where I live, or whether we move to a 55 and older community, you know, when we're 55. So I'm never, I can always walk out the door and have a water aerobics class to go

• 16:20Speaker 03

  to, to find people to play mahjong with. I cannot, the idea of being alone in the country does not suit me. I'm sorry. I will go, I will go full The Shining in 48 hours. But I'm really starting, and knowing that life will throw you a million loops, like, let's like, you know, make God laugh, make a plan. But I think staying on this course of like, who am I? Am I the kind of person that would love being in the country? Like, no.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it sounds like, get to know yourself. Because I think you're right. You, we go, we kind of jump, if we did go to college or whatever we did after high school, we sort of are sprung into the real world. We start working, we start doing, our ambition map looks similar to like a TV show or a reality show that doesn't really exist in real life. And maybe what our parents told us to do, which is generationally antiquated. And now we're in our 40s and you're telling us, get to actually know yourself. If you're in a relationship though, and your partner is seemingly happy with the life that you've built, how does that conversation go?

• 17:27Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, it's so easy to say all good partnerships have to have amazing communication, but it is true. You know, you really do have to get specific about what you want. And when it comes to conversations with your partner, whether it's about sex, whether it's about opening a marriage, whether it's about not feeling up for having sex, you know, because of how your body is doing, or whether it's about, hey, like, I'm just, I just don't really want to live in New York anymore. I can't handle the traffic of Miami, or like, I gotta get out of this like tiny country town. I think the key is to come to the table with your feelings, but also with some hard points of like, this is what I would, this is how, what I think, where I think I'd like to be in five years. This is how I think I'd like to get there.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  I know this is important to you, to make it a we conversation. Everything, you can't say, I want this and you want this. It's like, here's what I would like for us to, the direction I would like for us to go in, like, what do you think? And really make it a conversation. And some of our partners are not that great of communicators. A lot of them aren't going to come to the table with a PowerPoint. But I think by saying, I can't take it anymore. I have to move is a tough, is a tough way to start a conversation. But by saying, you know, in five years, I think I, I think I really want to like scale down this big house and I think I might want to move someplace. It's a little closer to a city, you know? And explain why. And then of course, when you plan out a conversation, you, you have to, you can hope

• 18:54Speaker 03

  for the best outcome, but you just have to just sort of stick to your guns and explain why and listen, and listen to what your partner has to say. Because your partner may be happy with the way his life is now, but he could also haven't thought about, or she might not have thought about the future quite in the same way. You know, they might like their big house and like, yeah, it's going, okay. We finally fixed, we finally got a generator, you know? When we got the, the bats out of the attic, everything's pretty great, you know? But if you tell them, it's like, I know, but the kids will be out of the house and blah, blah, blah. They might be like, you know what? Now that you mention it, you know, maybe we could save if we've ended up moving, you know? So they just might not be thinking about the same things you're thinking, you know? Don't assume that your partner is just going to dig in and say, I don't want to do that. Or you're just.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  In one of your emotional, you're just being emotional, you know?

• 19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think that's really important to go in with your points and also be, you know, be gentle with your partner because upending someone else's life is, you know, it's a big ask.

• 19:54Speaker 04

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• 23:48Speaker 04

  I feel like so much of your life is on cruise control until you hit your 40s. And that includes how you've been spending, how you've been investing. And for many women, especially, I'm speaking now to women who might not have a job outside of the home, or they just have, for whatever reason, deferred a lot of their financial decision-making to their male partner. This now feels like unsustainable because if you are that woman who wants to move or go do something like a real hard plot twist, a pivot, that requires kind of looking at your numbers. How do you have that conversation and maybe go so far

• 24:30Speaker 04

  as to say, you know, as I wasn't working on the money stuff before, I want to be now? That can feel like coming out of left field for your partner. It could also feel like you don't trust them. What, I'm sure you've had lots and lots of these conversations, as I have, about this with, with couples. But what do you feel like is a good way to A, have that conversation and B, come out feeling like there's resolution?

• 24:57Speaker 03

  You know, this is something that a lot of women also feel bad about, like, oh, I should have had more of a stake in the finances. Or, you know, I mean, a lot of women do run the finances of the home, you know, but they might, they might have been in and out of the workplace. They might not be contributing presently, you know? I mean, a lot of us are making more money. But, but I think the point is, it's like, if you don't feel like an equal partner in your marriage, then you really have to think about it. And now is the time. Better now than later. You know, everyone, you know, talking about that book, that Bill Burton book, you know, and it's so funny how that book has brought on all these conversations when it's, it's really kind of an outlier situation in some ways. Like, very, you know, but there are people who are like, oh, I didn't, I didn't contribute.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  I just stayed home and watched the kids. And, you know, I feel weird asking, like, for half of things, you know? And I think, and I spoke with some, who do you talk to? Talk to a divorce attorney, you know? And because that's the person you want to talk to for advice. Like, and I think the thing is, like, sit down and talk to your partner and say, you know, if you haven't had this conversation already, say, you know, I just, I have, I don't feel like an equal partner in this marriage. I feel very, I'm not saying anything's going to happen to us. But, you know, I, I am kind of freaked out that I, that I feel that I, I'm not the one who knows how to make the investments, you know, in

• 26:22Speaker 03

  our portfolio. I'm not, I feel, you know, like, I haven't had the information to kind of let you do things. And it's a tough conversation. It's actually a conversation that I would recommend talking to. If you have a therapist to talk to beforehand, especially if it's a therapist who you can talk to about money issues, to make a script. These are very hard conversations because you're coming at it, if this is something that's on your mind, you're coming at it from a place of defensiveness. You're coming at it from a place of sadness. You're coming at it from a place of, I should have. So I do think this is a conversation that you need to take very seriously and that you might want some help preparing for. Because how do you come at it from a place of power? Like, I am, I want to have this conversation. I want to take control. This is what control means

• 27:06Speaker 03

  to me, you know? For some people, it might, everyone's, there's all this general advice and it makes me crazy. What would it mean for me to feel more in control? And it's like, I need to know where all the financial documents are. I need to really see what our investments are. Sometimes our investments aren't where they think they are. You know, Bobby Rebel, she, she said that some, some guys make decisions for the family and things go wrong and they don't tell you, you know? So, because they're embarrassed. I actually know a situation like that. A friend of mine-

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  -had invested in some real estate. It didn't go well. And I don't think he ever told the wife about it because he just didn't, yeah, because he was embarrassed and he didn't want to threaten her feelings of security. And he was taking risks without, you know, without her, no, you know, like, it's, the things are, can be very off the ball. So it's very important to be clued in if you haven't been before. And if you are thinking about ending the marriage, this is more important than ever, is to take some time and be like, where, where are all my documents? How do I start to claw back some of my own money? It's very complicated. Everyone's stuff is all in a joint account. Sometimes everything's a big smush. So if you are planning on, on ending the marriage, take a second and figure

• 28:22Speaker 03

  out, and make a plan, honestly, about what's going to happen, where the money's going to come from, who is money, is, make sure what's yours is yours. And get support. This is not just from friends, but get professional support of someone who can really help you stand up for yourself because you did run the household. If you stayed home, like, you ran the household, you did all these things.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  You know, you also, honestly, probably worked for a lot of the time, you know? And just, you have to get down to why you feel less than. And that's where I think it's just too much for us to, to come up with those answers ourselves when we're juggling so much else. So I think that sometimes we need to, we need to talk to a therapist about these larger conversations.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  I love that piece of advice. And it speaks to a bigger theme that is something I've been kind of chewing on lately, which is like, when you hit midlife, there are, there are investments that I think we should definitely be looking into more than ever. One is, to your point, a therapist, whether that's a financial therapist and/or a therapist's therapist, to help you do the first thing, which is kind of reexamine your life, understand how you're feeling, why you're feeling the way you're feeling. But also, I think, you know, tactically speaking, too, there's like brokerage accounts I think we should be investing in. We should be taking advantage of catch-up contributions in our 401Ks. You know, because

• 29:50Speaker 04

  we hear about all these other investments, like skincare and, you know, vitamins and, you know, fill-in-the-blank health product. And so, along that theme, what are some other quote-unquote investments of your time, of your money, that I think is very important at this stage in your life? I'd say also, like, upskilling, right? Are we learning more about your career and where it's going? Or if you want to make a pivot, like, investing to, you know, learn that process and kind of, you know, get yourself in a good place? So that in the, in the year or two, you can, you can apply for those jobs that you can't apply for right now?

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That's such an interesting thing, you know?

• 30:33Speaker 03

  It's very hard to cut through the noise, you know, you know, like skincare and your appearance, like, you know, investing in your health. To me, investing in my health is I would really like to not have a heart attack. You know, like when I'm 55, I would like to not have, I need, like, I would like to not have my, my bones drop off my body.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  You know, that's, that's important.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  As opposed to, I want to look 20 when I'm 55, right?

• 31:00Speaker 03

  I mean, I understand that I'm from a planet where I, I think a lot of this stuff is, I'm very anti-wellness. I know that that's not very popular. I think a lot of this is telling us things that we should, it's more shoulding.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  It's like, you should look this, are you, are you, if everyone else is doing this. I think your appearance is very important. You have to look in the mirror and wink at yourself every day and be like, you are fabulous. And I do, I'm delusional. I look at myself in the mirror, I'm like, you're amazing, you know, because you have to, someone's got to do it, you know? But when it comes to stuff that's really going to pay off in your soul, you know, I absolutely think that you're investing in your career. And I think that investing is also thought and time. It's like, where do I want to be in 10 years? Which is very hard to think in the future. But I knew for myself that I needed to slowly move away from writing for a living. And that is, and it's not, and I had to forgive myself, all the advice I give others, the

• 31:56Speaker 03

  advice I've given myself, I had to forgive myself, you know, I did, who would have thought that journalism would go to the, the sorry place that it is? Who would have thought that all these things would have just flamed out spectacularly? I have to forgive myself. I didn't have a, you know? So I started slowly sort of pivoting and I'm getting my certification as a sex educator and a coach. And I'm starting to think about how I want to move more into, still writing, I'm always going to be a writer, but more about sexual health and financial health and more into the world of the heart and the spirit. And I signed up for the certification course. It took like two years for me to get out the courage to, to decide that it was okay

• 32:39Speaker 03

  to, to do this sort of stuff and to think, well, when is it going to pay off? And I have to think to myself, in five years, I'm hoping my life will look like XYZ. So there is a leap of faith.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  And in the middle of that, you do have to kind of eat it a little bit and do work you might not be crazy about, but you have to have your eye on a certain goal. And then what are my goals? Okay. Is my goal to have, you know, a Prada bag? Is my goal to have fabulous trips to like, to Turks and Caicos? And no, my goal is to just make a living.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  You know, my goal is to make a living doing something that doesn't make me want to throw up. You know, honestly.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  I love the honesty.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Oh my God. I'd like to have a new couch.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  It's so true. It's so refreshing.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Oh, I want to have a new couch, my, you know, I want to not stress about my bills. I want to just, I want to take the times to do nothing. I want the freedom to just lie on the couch some days. And dude, I don't want to have to check slack on the toilet. Like these like basic things, like these are, I've really gotten into my deep, and you have to get really dark and honest and funny with yourself about all the things during the day that you have had it with, had it. And I really just want, if I can make a living being, you know, a sex educator and a coach and, and write about it and maybe start building out a little business of these things that I am really passionate about, I, it was not following my passion.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  It's like a little different because I really, I thought if I look at my career as a journalist, it's kind of a bust in a lot of ways, in my opinion. And I'm not putting myself down. I'm not, I'm just saying financially, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't what I thought it could be. For a lot of us feel that way. But I have learned so much. I had to give myself a little bit of credit for all the stuff I did learn and I did do. And it wasn't financially great, but a lot of it was so cool. You know, like I wrote a crazy sex book. I did stand-up comedy for a while. That was really a wild thing. That was, that changed my life more than any job. It changed the way I thought. It changed the way I, it changed my idea of risk.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  It changed my idea of mortification and will you survive humiliation? And the answer is yes.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Well, that raises the other point, which is that when you hit this stage in your life, in your midlife, I'm going to bet, especially if you are like an ambitious, high-achieving woman, that you didn't really leave a lot of room in your life for just exploratory fun. You know, like the chance to just fall on your face and that's fine. You know, I, I remember this great book I read, it was called like Suck, Suck at Something? Like, the point being that.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Like, I did stand-up comedy and the first like seven out of the eight weeks of the boot camp, I did not know what I was doing. And somehow it all just like the stars aligned and I managed to get myself on a stage and do like a set.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  But I sucked at it. And you know what? The humility, but the fun also and the, just using a part of my brain that I don't, have never really used consistently, that was the point of that. And that's okay, right? Like nothing, not everything has to lead to a paycheck or an award or something you put in your bio or something you even like, you know, it's not, it's not a bragging right. It's just, it is what it is. There's a pull that you have, a tug that you have to it, follow it. And so, you know, yes, invest in your retirement, yes, invest in upskilling, yes, invest in therapy. Also invest, carve out a little bit of time to just have fun.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  Oh my God, absolutely just have fun. And also, it's like, there's not just financial rewards, like getting, like I lost money doing comedy for two years. It was a negative, it was a negative.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  It was a negative, yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  But it was the most important thing I ever did. It changed my entire, I called it a creative colonic, which is kind of gross, but it really was, I was very bound up, Farid, I was very bound up. And I just was very lost in my career. I felt like such a, this was when I was 36, I felt like everything had just, had just gone wrong. And I'd always had this dream of doing stand-up comedy. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to have kids. I just felt very lost. All my friends were having kids, what was wrong with me? All my friends' careers were going pretty well, mine was, in my mind, was not, like what was wrong with me? Everything had gone wrong. 17-year-old Lindsay would be disgusted with 36-year-old Lindsay.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  And I was just such, felt so stuck, so stuck and so unhappy. And one day I just like walked out the door and I started, you know, I'm like, I think how can things get any worse? You know? And I walked out the door and I started doing stand-up. And it was, it was the most no stakes thing I ever did. Stand-up comedy is very no stakes for the most part. Everyone is mostly terrible. You know, so you can only, so, which is also inspiring because everyone is just, is just as bad as you and trying to do better. Comedy is very hard and you watch your, your, your people that you come up with, you watch them fine-tune their set and you watch them working.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  It's like you watch the sculpture being, you know, being refined and you start to work towards something. And the rewards weren't financial. It was confidence for me to get up and just bomb like that. It was confidence in my ideas. This one comic who was total asshole, but he gave me some really interesting insight. So he was, he's kind of a famous comic and he did a set. I ran a really good comedy show in my neighborhood in Queens and he did a set and it bombed. And it was funny because it usually did really well. And I, and I, after he was done, I went over to him and I'm like, oh, like, like that was rough, I'm really sorry, you know? Because of course I was apologizing for the audience. And he said, it doesn't matter, this, this, it all works 80% of the time. And I can't think about that 20% of the times it fails.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  I, it goes, the set is proven to do well most of the time. And I think about that every day when it comes to my own ideas. Not everyone's going to like my ideas, but 80% of people seem to think that my ideas are pretty cool. I can't listen to that 20%. I have to stay, I can't just, you know, be like a reed in the wind. You have to have faith in your ideas. And that was just, that's advice you really can't get sort of elsewhere. And I applied a lot of the lessons in comedy to, to the rest of my life. And, you know, I, I've taken so many insane risks since then. I wrote a sex, a kink and sex book, which could have been very mortifying for most people, but I'd already done mortifying things.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  So nothing can be as bad as bombing for eight minutes in front of an audience of drunks, you know, like, and having, it's like, I've just, I've been embarrassed already. So I think that, so how could I, it was not financially rewarding. I didn't become a famous stand-up comedy, I, comic, I had to go back to work. But it made me more interesting to employers because people are like, that's interesting, you did that? That's how I got a very big job was because they said, comedy? What's that about? And that's how I got in the door. So it was, it did have financial rewards, but even if you're doing like crafting or art class, you're learning while you're, while you're doing.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  You know, like there's investing in yourself, it's not just financially and you don't know where these rewards are going to come in. You don't, you, it's, everything is so scripted and programmed, but you don't know the thing that you're going to do that's going to just suddenly rock a new idea into your brain.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  I could talk to you for hours, Lindsay. But as we sadly have to wrap here, I would love for you to share, like, what are the biggest myths, or even just one midlife myth pertaining to money and work, that you want to bust for good, that you want to retire for good?

• 40:36Speaker 03

  The myth I want to bust is that you are not, if you haven't hit these prescribed milestones, that you are not a failure.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  You know, and that your life may not have gone the same as other people's lives, and you have to be okay with that. Your milestones might be, have been like, I just want to get away from, you know, get out of my hometown. I want to be able to always, you know, pay my own rent. You know, I always wanted to, you know, have a, you know, own and take care of a dog. Like, the things that you are proud of, like, let those be some of the milestones that you hit. Don't let anyone tell you how you're supposed to live your life. You have created a beautiful and unique and weird life. You did it, a lot of it on your own with no script, no help, no real guidance counselor. My guidance counselor was completely out of the lunch, you know,

• 41:25Speaker 03

  and just, you just have faith in the fact that you didn't make every wrong decision with your finances. Everyone has debt. Everyone spent money on the wrong things. Everyone has too much student loan debt. You have to just forgive yourself. You have to say, I'm not alone, and I'm going to survive it somehow. And everyone is a mess, and, and I'm going to be okay because I have peers that can help me through this. There are professionals that can help me through this. I don't have to do this alone. And you, it's not all, you don't have to burn it all down, you know? You really don't. But you can kind of toss away the things that aren't working. It's not the same as burning it all down. And your midlife plot twist could be anything you want it to be. It can be, you know, suddenly I'm taking on a part-time job.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  It could be suddenly, you know, I, you know, I want to go back to school. It could be, my twist is like, I don't want to be in this marriage anymore. Just your twist could be anything you want it to be. But you are not a failure. You didn't do everything wrong. You did the best you could, and just, I'm very proud of you. I'm proud of you. Lindsay's proud of you.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  I said that the other day in a meeting. I'm really proud of us.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  I'm such a, I have such an, I'm not a mom, but I'm such an aunt, you know? I, I love telling people how proud I am of them because they have, people do not see how amazing they're doing. They have no clue. They do not see how heroic they, their lives are.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  Well, and you're looking for that external validation, and you're not going to get it half the time. It's not because people don't think you're great, it's just because they're busy with their own lives, and they're not noticing. So you need to be your biggest advocate and recognizer of talents and growth and all of the things.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  I know we have to run, but I'll say one thing is, it was a really fun, I try to make all advice sort of universal. So when it comes to, if you're about, if you're about to get divorced, one woman gave this great advice about have your best friend make your, your dating bio. Don't do it yourself. Have your best friend do it. You know, you don't know you, you don't know how great you are. And it's, and have your friends make, help you with your resume. Have your friends help you with a life resume, you know? Not just your professional resume. Like, you did this, you did this. Oh, my God, you moved out of the city with a U-Haul by yourself. Oh, my God, you got, you, you got all your kids through the measles while you were working full-time. You need a friend to just make a life resume of all the rad stuff you did, all the stuff you conquered and how you made it. You are still here.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  I'm so proud of you.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  I'm so proud of you, and I'm so, I'm so proud of you, Lindsay. This book is phenomenal, you and Gabrielle Moss. The Midlife Plot Twist, everybody. It comes out in September, September 15th, but we got a nice preview of it today. Appreciate you, and don't be a stranger on the show.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  I'd be honored to come back anytime you need me.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Thanks so much to Lindsay Goldwert for joining us. Her book again is called The Midlife Plot Twist. Preorder now. It comes out in September. I'll see you back here on Friday for Ask Farnoosh, and I hope your day is so money.

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