Doug Houser:
From Rea & Associates studio, this is Unsuitable, a management and financial services podcast for entrepreneurs, tenured business leaders and others who are ready to look beyond the suit and tie culture for meaningful measurable results. I'm Doug Houser. On this weekly podcast, thought leaders and business professionals break down complicated and mundane topics and give you the tips and insight you actually need to grow your business. If you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes, and if you want access to even more information, show notes and exclusive content, please visit our website at www.reacpa.com/podcast, and sign up for updates.
Doug:
A wise yet fictional character once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get." Well, the same can be said about retirement. To some degree, you can plan and strategize and plan some more right up until the day you receive your last paycheck and still be shocked by how different your expectations were from reality.
Today, we're going to catch up with Unsuitable legend, Dave Cain, to learn what he's been up to since retiring from Rea and the podcast and find out if he could go back, what would he do differently to prepare for retirement? Welcome back to Unsuitable, Dave.
Dave Cain:
Hey Doug, thanks for having us here, and I guess, congratulations for you. This is your 100th episode. Did I hear that?
Doug:
Yeah, my 100th as host and you were obviously the legend in this chair before me. So we're up to almost 300 total. It's hard to believe, and that looking back on almost close to six years run here for this thing. Crazy-
Dave:
That's pretty good. This thing was... I remember the day it was scripted. It was in a watering hole in Dublin. We thought this might work, but it might not either, and 300 episodes later, you're still going strong. Way to go.
Doug:
Yeah, it's hard to believe and continues to evolve. And obviously we've had to adapt through COVID here and we're going to be getting back to in-person here shortly, which we all look forward to with that. So what's going on with you? How did you imagine your life once you walked out of the office here and what's it been like for you?
Dave:
Well, I knew on my goal, on my list was I wanted to play a lot of golf and I wanted to play golf all year round. So I was able to accomplish that now. I didn't say good golf, but golf, nonetheless. So that was a big thing and retirement's been pretty cool. I got to say pretty cool. Of course, I certainly missed the folks at Rea, but Rea was a tremendous springboard for me and maybe I can share some thoughts as I went into retirement. I still use some of the training that I received from my Rea mentors.
Doug:
Good, good, like such as? Let's hear about it.
Dave:
Well, I would tell you that what made it very easy for me to go into retirement is I worked for a great company. Rea was just a fantastic company from the get-go. I spent 40 years there and that was certainly my goal to stay with one company and the leadership at Rea gave me every opportunity to try different things, step out of the box, so to speak and build my career and forever grateful to those leaders. I certainly remember back in, I'm not sure, certainly dating myself, but back in the 80s, I still remember the meeting when Rea introduced the 401k to the team and of course, back then nobody knew what a 401k was.
Dave:
I thought it sounded kind of cool, and of course, they said, "Look, you put some money aside in a savings account. We'll match some, and that money will grow compounding interest in tax deferred, and that sounded pretty good. I took advantage of that, and I think that was one of the things way back... I wasn't even thinking about retirement, but just that benefit with that kind of company and the leaders had the forethought to put that benefit in for the employees was fantastic. From my understanding, still going strong, Rea has great benefits.
Doug:
Yeah. Tax Reform Act of 1986, that was-
Dave:
I remember that.
Doug:
Yeah, I'm dating myself a little bit here too. I'm starting to feel the same, Dave because we had a partner meeting here a couple of weeks ago, and one of my colleagues mentioned how she was with somebody professionally, at meeting and how they commented about their age and this individual graduated from college that same year this individual was born, this partner. I looked at her and I said, I won't name her name, but I said I was born that same year.
Doug:
So, I'm starting to feel it too. With experience comes wisdom though. We were talking about this pre-show, I think in your 40s, you start to really realize and take into heart, all of the things that you've learned and you start to absorb that and really put it into practice. Before then at least for me, I always felt like I didn't know where I was going, all over the place and thinking different things, trying different things. You sort of get to a point where you care less about maybe about what others around you feel about you personally, and you're just, I would say more transparent, and true and honest, at least it felt that way for me. Did you find that as you went on in your career as you went along-
Dave:
Oh, for sure. I share a couple stories with you along the way. One of my favorite Rea folks of all time is Chris Axene tax partner and he would always teach and coach us to do the planning. The planning was way more important than anything you could ever do because when you get in the 11th hour, planning's a little bit of a challenge. So I took that under advisement, probably the last 10 years of my career, as I started to look to the future and whether I wanted to retire and it was plan, plan, plan. It sounds like that's rather textbook, but it was actually pretty easy to put that in play. Of course, I've always surrounded myself with good advisors and that still exists today. In fact, I use a Rea partner, Peggy Minnig, and Lima to do my tax return and we currently use investment partners and Doug Feller financial planning, and we've been doing that for a number of years prior to retirement.
Dave:
Along that line, one of the things that I thought was pretty critical is that I'd introduced my wife, Debbie to those advisors. Of course, I knew them my entire career. She didn't know them. I thought, well, I got to make that introduction. So that was probably one of the first things we did as far as planning is... make those introductions. So she knows a lot of the resources within the Rea network that she can reach out if something would ever happen or we need advice. We still use Rea, and we'll continue to use Ray for the time being.
Doug:
Yeah, that's great. What has surprised you as you moved into retirement? People give you all these lessons and you think, "Okay, I'm going to have all this free time. I want to make sure I stay busy, et cetera." But what has surprised you the most as you transitioned into retirement?
Dave:
Well, a lot of folks that I talked to a lot of friends, they said, "Oh man, you're going to get bored. You're just going to get really bored." What I've found is I've not been bored. I've found things to keep busy, whether it's... I probably re gripped my golf clubs two or three times. When you get bored, you just go down and re grip that driver. So I've done that, I've got into cooking, bought a new grill. Of course, the pandemic, you're at home so you got to do a lot of things differently. But I found just look, I've done some things I'd never even thought we would do and boredom hasn't been part of the equation.
Doug:
Good. That's good for you. So have you been able to travel a little bit and see some family members, et cetera, and spend some time in warmer climes during the winter here?
Dave:
We certainly have and of course, that was part of the plan, and the goal that we set up both financially and from a calendar standpoint is that we didn't want to travel. Of course, COVID took care of some of that, but we were still able to do it safely. We certainly didn't get see to our family members as much as we wanted to, but we would... I wouldn't say we Zoomed. We had a lot of FaceTime time with them and got it together from a distance but we worked through that looking at day, it wasn't bad. It wasn't that bad. So we kind of enjoy that and of course, the warm weather was nice. We do a warm a weather thing.
Doug:
Good. Good for you.
Dave:
Of course, I always have a tendency to text some of the folks at Rea right about April 13th. Let them know I'm either at the beach or getting ready to tee off. Of course, I don't hear from them too much. I get some emojis that probably aren't the most pleasant emojis, but I certainly remind them, and we laugh together with them-
Doug:
That's good. Now what about the mental side of it, because I know this having seen this with the business owner, clients, et cetera, it's kind of the mental side, when you all of a sudden step away from your business or your career, is that something that you were prepared for? I'm getting certainly a little personal here, but can you share how you've tackled that and what that felt like for you just emotionally?
Dave:
Yeah. Stepping away mentally was a challenge at first. I had a lot of friends, whether they be employees or clients that you no longer got to see or talk to. Of course, you could email them and text them, and that was tough because that's what CPA business is all about, those relationships. I miss them that took a toll initially mentally, but I found a way to stay in touch with those people and follow them, whether it be on, not that I'm a big Facebook, but we'd follow the business. We'd stop by. That was kind of the mental part of it. But I did have to work out of that because in the CPA business, you're always working deadlines. Everything's a deadline. Now all of a sudden, you don't have deadlines. It was cool, but hey, now my deadline was, I had to have a lawn mowed by Wednesday at two o'clock and meals done by 5:30. Just different deadlines, just different stuff.
Dave:
Got into doing some different reading that I had never done before. Of course when you're in the CPA business, professional stuff, you're always reading journals and technology stuff and to step away from that and read other periodicals and stories and things that you hadn't studied before was neat. My wife and I both... she retired a few years before I did, but we try to work on our health and our fitness. So we would do a lot of exercising together and listening to the music together just to relax and get the mental part into the retirement stage versus thinking back.
Doug:
Yeah. That is a challenge. I'm glad to hear you say that, but yeah, I can think about as you bring that up, it's not just the time that you're actually at work, those of us, obviously in a career like a CPA firm, it's all the technical stuff, the business stuff, all the other things that you try to absorb really outside of the office that are a part of what you do and who you are as well and to all of a sudden take some of that away too, it's good to find another outlet for some of that thirst for knowledge, so to speak.
Dave:
Right. Again, a lot of our friends retired before I did. So when I retired, they were already going out on Tuesday nights and staying up late, stuff that I hadn't been able to do before. When I say stay up late, 9:30, 10 o'clock.
Doug:
Well, absolutely, [crosstalk 00:14:10] I totally get it.
Dave:
Yeah. When I was working, they'd say, "Look, you got to retire. We can do this, this and this." I'd say, wait a minute. I can't do that until I'll retire, but I have some good friends that helped me get through it. In all honesty, Doug, after the first three months, it was pretty easy to adjust. Of course, we were staying busy. Even today, I still go back and think about the financial aspects of retirement. And that's where an advisor like Doug Feller has really helped us out to see a clear path and relax and not look at the market, day to day and come up with some different strategies. He certainly taught us to study our spending. Just like CPA business, a lot of that, it's pretty easy. Then you learn how much money you spend when you're going out to dinner or DoorDash or on your hobbies and stuff like that, or golf. Golf gets a little expensive
Doug:
Yeah, absolutely. [crosstalk 00:15:25]-
Dave:
Yeah. We turn off the electric just so we can play golf. But Doug, it has been a fantastic resource as far as that. I guess you'd be remiss if you didn't step into retirement and worry about the financial part of it-
Doug:
Sure. It's just natural, right?
Dave:
Yeah. That's why I mentioned earlier that 401k was just a godsend to us, and I don't know where along the line that we decided we were going to commit to that, but it was early in the career. Again, I think it was going back to the mentors that I had with Rea, I said that that was a good financial decision. Of course, both of our parents, my wife's parents and my parents outlived their savings. We both saw that and of course, that was a little rough on both of us and we decided, "Look, we're not going to do that as much as we can. We're going to go have a good time, enjoy things but due diligence on our finances."
Doug:
Yeah. It's just stressful. Even those of us obviously in the financial services industry, no matter who you are, you can't help but think about it and you see situations like you mentioned, and I've got some of that in my family too. It concerns you and you want to make sure, hey, I'm doing the right things for our family and we want to make sure we can enjoy ourselves, but you never know. So you try to get wise advisors around you, as you suggested and not get into group think and make sure you're getting different perspective and just make the best decision for you.
Dave:
Yeah. Along that line, and one of the best piece of advice I got from a good friend was, several months before we retired, we went to see our legal counsel just to redo all the documents, the wills. Not that the will was a big deal, but the power of attorneys and the healthcare issues just in case. After that was completed, that was a big relief. I have to tell you, I think that was probably the one big relief is making sure that the beneficiaries are right on. Your documents and your pensions and things like that, that was a super big relief as I prepared for retirement.
Doug:
It helps your family too, because they know that then, you've been thinking about that, thinking about them and that it's less painful for everybody when the time comes certainly.
Dave:
Sure. We wanted to make all those decisions where we were both able to, and we took it out of their hands. So that was our goal and we got that done. After that, I think we were off and running. I'm still trying to get a match with some of the Rea partners, golf match. I think-
Doug:
I'm in.
Dave:
Well, you know what Axene, and I think he's hiding. [crosstalk 00:18:40] I know is hiding. I think the last time we played them, I think we scorched them a little bit and I think they've stayed away. They've kept their distance.
Doug:
I'll see if I can ignite them a little bit.
Dave:
Good luck with that.
Doug:
Yeah, we'll try our best. Well, glad to hear everything's going great. So I always love to ask this. It's hard to believe you look great, you sound great and you're enjoying everything, but if you could look back and do any one thing differently, as you prepped over, say the five years leading up to the time you stepped away, would you do anything a little differently or not so much?
Dave:
I don't think so. I ask myself that all the time, should we have relocated? For example, we look back occasionally... We have done something there and we decided, nope, we're fine or I guess maybe put a little more money aside for that travel budget because we really want to start traveling again. We got some things canceled, but I don't really see one thing again, going back to the planning concept, we tried to check all the boxes before we finalized retirement. So no, I don't think so. I don't think there's one thing I would do differently.
Doug:
And I appreciate that, and I can certainly tell from being here and overlapping a bit with your time that you always had the best attitude and I always admired that. I think that shows now that you've transitioned to retirement, you always had a... I think a good balance and a good outlook on spending time with people and making sure you did things beyond just the basics of the job let's say, and that's important-
Dave:
Right. I want to make sure I try to answer your question, I would go back... From a career perspective and this is kind of where Rea is at now with the migrate and choose and be a specialist, if I could turn back the clock that much, I probably would have picked more of a specialty than a general practitioner. Although again, my coaches and mentors is that that's the specialty as a generalist. But I probably would have wanted to specialize a little bit more. That would be the only one thing, and that's not that big of a deal even. I don't lose any sleep over that. Let's put it that way.
Doug:
Right. Good for you. You shouldn't. Absolutely. Well, Dave, really appreciate you catching up with us. Every day that we're here doing the podcast, we think about you and you were legend in this seat. In terms of the podcast world, I think you go by one name and that's Cain. You're like Prince or share. You just got one name. That's all you need.
Dave:
I need a symbol.
Doug:
Yeah. You do. You need a symbol to go along with that like Prince had-
Dave:
Well, thanks Doug, and certainly, I want a shout out to the Rea people. I still refer to it as we, not Rea-
Doug:
Yeah, you are.
Dave:
Actually, I see where we're now 80th largest firms in the country-
Doug:
Yeah, hard to believe it.
Dave:
That's fantastic. That's certainly a tribute to all the people at Rea from top to bottom, and I miss the culture. I miss the brand. I don't miss the deadlines. I don't miss the new tax laws, but I miss the culture. That'll stick with me for the rest of my life, and I still have the Rea Way, one of those little cards that Marketing wanted to give us back, the old [crosstalk 00:22:41] probably from the 90s. I still have the Rea Way and I still try to follow that each and every day.
Doug:
Yeah, absolutely. Great stuff. Well, thanks again, Dave and-
Dave:
Appreciate it.
Doug:
I look forward to getting together soon and get out on the golf course. That sounds fun.
Dave:
Great.
Doug:
If you want even more business tips and insight, or to hear previous episodes of Unsuitable, please visit our podcast page at www.reacpa.com/podcast. And while you're there, sign up for exclusive content and show notes. Thanks for listening to this week's show. Be sure to subscribe to Unsuitable on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to us right now, including YouTube. I'm Doug Houser. Join us next week for another Unsuitable interview from an industry profession.
