_{BY PETER BOWES | OCTOBER 21, 2020 | 0911 PT}

What if we run out of money, as we get older? If we live a very long, healthy and active life, will we be able to afford the kind of lifestyle that we aspire to, as a nonagenarian or centenarian? The so-called longevity risk poses a dilemma for many people. The goal is to enjoy a vibrant healthspan but it could prove to be expensive.  

In this episode of the Live Long and Master Aging podcast we discuss the financial side of living a very long life. We also meet LLAMA’s new sponsor, AgeUp, a novel financial product that provides guaranteed supplemental income for people who worry about the financial impact of longevity. We explore the idea of longevity annuities – sometimes called deferred income annuities – as a way to set up a stream of income for life beyond 90. 

Blair Baldwin, founder and general manager of AgeUp, explains how the product came about, he shares the research behind the concept, and breaks down how it works.

Interview recorded: October 15, 2020

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NOTES & QUOTES 

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Connect with AgeUp: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | AgeUp Product Snapshot | AgeUp FAQs | AgeUp Calculator | Interview transcript

Blair Baldwin Bio

Blair Baldwin is the founder and general manager of AgeUp, a first-of-its-kind financial product that fundamentally reimagines how annuities can both materially help the lives of middle class Americans and solve a looming financial crisis facing our country: how to close the gap between life expectancy and retirement savings. Blair and his team developed AgeUp as a new business unit inside Haven Life, MassMutual’s in-house startup.

AgeUp is available only in the United States. 

In this episode we cover:

• The story behind AgeUp and how Blair developed an interest in human longevity. 
• The challenge: Creating financially accessible products that “do a little good for the world.”
• Family conversations about money and old age. 
• Attitudes towards extreme longevity and how they affect our perspective on money. 

“If you have fewer worries about money and finances, especially when you imagine the future state, that can only help lower your levels of anxiety and can only correlate to a more healthy lifestyle, essentially, and a better chance of living a very long life.”

Blair Baldwin, AGEUP

• Setting in place a financial plan to create an income over the age 90 
• Why have an income stream so late in life?
• Weighing the options and assessing the longevity risk. 
• Involving the family and building in a safety net. 
• Longevity and Covid 19 – and the importance of a long-term view

This episode of the Live Long and Master Aging podcast is produced in association with AgeUp, a new product that helps fill in the financial gaps that are often created once you’ve mastered aging and achieved an exceptionally long life. Small monthly payments to AgeUp stack over time to create a secure income stream for your 90s and beyond. Contributions to AgeUp are shielded from market swings, and once payouts begin at age 91 or above, they’re guaranteed to last for life. AgeUp is backed by MassMutual and sold by Haven Life Insurance Agency. You can find out more at Age-Up.com

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TRANSCRIPT

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Blair Baldwin: [00:00:01] We asked the question, what would be the most awkward dinnertime conversation and next to sex, money and parents’ finances were like a close second. So the conversations aren’t happening, but it’s something that really will impact both generations, both the generation of people living into their one hundreds and the generation that’s supporting them that’s younger.

Peter Bowes: [00:00:21] Hello again, and welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast. I’m Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind human longevity. Now, one of the most common questions I hear related to lifespan is what if we run out of money as we get older? And if we live a very long, healthy, active life, will we be able to afford the kind of lifestyle that we aspire to? It’s all very well imagining that one hundredth birthday, as surely more and more of us will experience in the future. But if it also comes with economic hardship and uncertainty, the joy of achieving a great healthspan may not be so great after all. We’re going to discuss that today and also meet our new sponsor. I’m very pleased to say that over the next few months, LLAMA podcast episodes will be brought to you in association with AgeUp, a new product that addresses this very issue, and how to ensure that you or your parents have guaranteed supplemental income if you or they live an exceptionally long life. We’re going to delve into the world of finance. I’m joined by the founder and general manager of AgeUp, Blair Baldwin. Welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Blair Baldwin: [00:01:35] Oh, thank you, Peter, for having me.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:37] It’s great to talk to you. This episode is a little different to most. I wanted to spend some time learning more about AgeUp since we’re entering into this relationship over the next few weeks and months. Sponsorship is hugely important to this podcast to ensure our longevity. And I’m very happy that we’re doing this.

Blair Baldwin: [00:01:55] Same here. It seems like such a perfect match, a longevity new type of longevity product with a longevity podcast, it’s perfect.

Peter Bowes: [00:02:03] Well, before we delve into the issues and before we delve into longevity annuities, tell me about your own personal background and how you got into this.

Blair Baldwin: [00:02:14] Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s a it’s a great story also, and I will say that I’m relatively new to the world of longevity and the issues surrounding it. I’m a really a startup guy by background. A few years ago, I founded an insurance startup that then was acquired by one of these very large sort of reputable insurance carriers. And they they gave us this fascinating challenge. They said recreate or reimagine what you could do with annuities, with almost no constraints, really. The only constraints being make something that’s digital, that’s financially accessible to everybody and that does a little good for the world, that solves some meaningful problem. Now, I want to say I realize that the word annuities is a little charged. And for some people, it’s going to make their eyes roll in for other people, is going to make their eyes, frankly, close and go to sleep. So I promise you that I will not spend a lot of time talking about annuities and the word annuity. But I do want to talk about sort of the longevity and interesting financial product that we developed along the way. So going back to sort of when we got acquired by by this very large, reputable insurance carrier, MassMutual, in their start up subsidiary here in life, they gave us this open ended challenge around sort of annuities. And we really didn’t know anything about annuities, which was a good thing because it gave us a completely blank slate to work with. And so, you know, we tried to understand these very complex products and really boil them down to their to their essence. And one of the things that they are marketed as is longevity protection. And we kind of picked up that thread and started playing with it and seeing where it went. And one of the first places it went, is it actually, well, they do sort of provide longevity protection. In a way, the definition of longevity is something that probably wouldn’t resonate with your audience. Most annuities are sold to people in their 50s, 60s, early 70s. And the latest you can annuitize the product is it’s usually about 85 years old, which in today’s day and age is actually not a very long lifespan or health span. So that’s sort of one thread. The other thread that we started going down, which relates to its longevity, is we started looking at sort of all these kind of wacky, interesting products from the past that are sort of related to annuities and what we could learn from them. And one of the products that we looked at that was just really inspiring is something called a tontine. I don’t know. Have you ever heard of this product?

Peter Bowes: [00:04:42] I have not tell me.

Blair Baldwin: [00:04:43] Oh, this is fantastic. And Peter, if you ever want to go down a Wikipedia click hole, Google tontine. A tontine is this fascinating financial instrument that was invented in Italy in the 17th century. And think of it as kind of like a like a longevity lottery. So you have a bunch of people who put in some money, usually to one of the monarchies of Europe at the time. This was what was used to fund sort of wars, essentially, and conquest. And what would happen is every year that monarchy would sort of pay out a dividend to the people that were still alive in the original tontine. And so if you think about it as time goes on and more and more people sort of die and sort of pass, the payout gets larger and larger. And so you end up having is a financial product that really rewards the folks that live a very, very long life disproportionately. And it’s in a lot of ways like true longevity insurance. And that was just really inspiring to us. And we asked the question like, well, you know, why? Why can’t we do something like that? In a lot of ways, Peter, it’s it’s almost the inverse of term life insurance. And so if you think about term life insurance, you pay a little bit of money into a pot and it’s protection in case you pass earlier than expected so that your family is, you know, is not left holding the bag. And this operates in the opposite way. And so that was kind of the inspiration. Like let’s let’s sort of take inspiration from this concept of a tontine and this concept of almost the inverse of life insurance and try to build a product. Now, there’s a problem, of course, which is that the tontine is really illegal. What ended up happening is that this financial product, two thirds of all insurance, the United States actually at the turn of the 20th century was a tontine. Everybody was buying these things and selling these things. And it was just rife with kind of scandal and misappropriation of funds. And so the government banned them. So you can’t actually do that. However, we we were inspired by the concept and we used some of the same principles to develop this new financial product AgeUp, which is really geared towards the sort of long tail of longevity people that are living into their mid 90s and 100s and a way to take small dollars and buy. Something that functioned and looks a lot like insurance, although it’s an annuity, just to be very clear, that starts paying out very late in life at a time when you likely will have exhausted your money and actually may need the resources.

Peter Bowes: [00:07:27] Well, I’d like to to delve into all of that in some detail and really sort of figure out and try to understand how it works, how it could work for me, how it could work for many people who are beginning to address that phase in their lives. And that’s what I’d like to go now in terms of perhaps some of the market research that you might have done, because I know I think everyone accepts that talking about money and talking about money associated with getting older is sometimes just a very difficult conversation, because often times you’re not talking about your own money. You might be talking about the money and the resources of your loved ones.

Blair Baldwin: [00:08:02] Mm

Peter Bowes: [00:08:02] And

Blair Baldwin: [00:08:02] Hmm.

Peter Bowes: [00:08:03] Some people just don’t want to think about it and feel nervous. And they almost think it’s it’s a morbid conversation to talk about what will be going on very late in life. Have you looked into that?

Blair Baldwin: [00:08:15] You know, we have and in one of the fascinating things about the sort of late in life finance is that it really is a multigenerational issue. And so we surveyed a couple of times people in their late 50s, 60s and early 70s and ask them questions like, you know, if you were to live to 100, how would you support yourself financially? And it turns out the number one answer is actually their family. I think about 43 percent. The government, surprisingly, is only about 23 percent of people said that the government would be their primary means of support. Now, what’s really interesting is you then sort of look at the children of that generation, which we’ve also surveyed extensively. And while they expect to financially support their their parents, the majority do. It’s interesting because these conversations aren’t happening. So most most adult children in their 30s and 40s never speak to their parents about money. In fact, we asked the question in terms of awkwardness, what would be the most awkward dinnertime conversation? And next to sex, money and parents finances were like a close second. So the conversations aren’t happening. But it’s something that really will impact both generations, both the generation of people in living into their 100s and the generation that supporting them. That’s younger. So it’s a great point.

Peter Bowes: [00:09:34] So let’s talk the process through then, at what age should we, do you think, be thinking about this if we acknowledge to ourselves that this is right for us, this kind of plan that could reap rewards very late in life, when do we start and how do we start?

Blair Baldwin: [00:09:52] Yeah, well, let’s first start with the who? So this type of product is really designed for somebody who’s in their 50s to early 70s, who’s living a healthy lifestyle and sort of aspires to that longevity that, you know, so, so core to this podcast. And that’s really the target audience in terms of the process. It’s very easy. It’s it’s just a website. You go to the website AgeUp Age Dash Up Dotcom. The product is underwritten by MassMutual, which is one of the largest and most respected insurance carriers, and the sign up process takes all of about five minutes. You enter in your bank account information and then every month a little bit of money. Your choice. How much? Between twenty five dollars and 250 dollars gets contributed into this longevity annuity. And then that’s it. You you focus on living your healthy lifestyle and doing everything you can to live as long as possible.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:51] And so let’s assume someone starting in their 50s, how long do they pay into it? In other words, when do they stop paying before they can get the income at a later age?

Blair Baldwin: [00:11:01] They can start or stop whenever they like, which is one of the beauties of the product, so you can start in your 50s putting twenty five dollars a month in, and then you can decide maybe there’s a change in your lifestyle or your health where you would no longer want to contribute it. And you can stop at any time any amount of money that you’ve put in at the time that you put in converts into a little slice of future income. So, Peter, think of it this way. Whenever you put in your, say, 50 dollars into this longevity annuity, when you make that contribution that converts into a little slice of income that may not start until you’re 95 or 100, but then it will go on for as long as you’re living. And so every monthly payment you made in the past is one little slice of future income in the future. And you can stop making those monthly payments at any time.

Peter Bowes: [00:11:53] What a lot of people might be concerned about when they hear us talking about getting to 90, 100 years old, 110 years old, and clearly for regular listeners to this podcast, when we talk about health issues and science, it’s an aspiration to have as long a health span as possible. That is the longest time when we’re active and involved in social and being able to do things physically. But clearly reality dawns and things sometimes impact us that we have absolutely no control over at all. And we might not last that long. We might get to 75, 80, 85. And the question clearly arises, if you’re getting into some sort of plan that will provide an income for you in your 90s, but you don’t actually reach that age, are you wasting your time?

Blair Baldwin: [00:12:43] You know, Peter, that’s a great question and one that actually sheds light on how the product works and gives us a way to talk about a few theoretical examples. So, you know, in our quest to make a really simple online product, we reduced the number of decisions a customer faces down to just two basic choices. The first choice is if you die before your 90s, do you want the money you paid in to go to your beneficiaries? Now, if you weren’t presented with an alternative, most people would just say yes without blinking. But in this case, it’s important to remember that if you opt out of returning the money that you put in to an AgeUp plan to your beneficiaries, you know, in the event that you pass before your 90s, the payout is actually much larger. And, you know, some people are going to be more interested in a lower risk, lower reward protection product, but others might be interested in the exact opposite. You know, as for the second choice, this relates to what age you select your AgeUp annuity to convert into guaranteed monthly income. Age 91 is the earliest in age 100 is the latest. Now, the longer you delay, the higher the payout. And this is because essentially those who pass early fund the payout pot for those who go who go on to live very long lives. So let’s sort of combine these two decision points into the case of a 65 year old man putting fifty dollars a month into AgeUp. And in the first case, let’s just imagine that he chooses his 91st birthday as the date for when the product converts into a guaranteed monthly income. In in this scenario, you know, if he opted to return whatever money he put in to his beneficiaries in case he passes before his 91st birthday, he would receive about 450 dollars per month. This amount almost doubles to about 850 dollars per month if he waives that that option. Now, let’s look at the other extreme. What if that same 65 year old man putting fifty dollars a month into AgeUp, picks age 100, his 100th birthday as the trigger point for when the product annuitises. Now in this case if he, you know, was to pick, the more conservative option of having the money get returned to his beneficiaries, if he passes before his 100th birthday, his monthly payout would be five thousand dollars of guaranteed income per month. Now, if he waived that right, though, that monthly payout shoots up to fourteen thousand dollars of guaranteed monthly income. And so what you see here is really, really radically different payout options based on individual preferences for risk and reward.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:39] So a lot of this actually goes to the mindset of people, doesn’t it, and people in mid-life in their 50s and 60s in terms of how they see themselves and their chances of getting to a very old age. And everyone views that in a rather different way. And maybe listeners to this podcast or rather more gung-ho and and positive in that respect, because they are, let’s say, trying to live the the life, the longevity lifestyle to get to that great age. But it does depend on your own certainty to some extent about how old you’re going to get.

Blair Baldwin: [00:16:13] You know, it’s true, Peter, and we actually did quite a bit of survey work on this topic to really understand sort of the average expectations around longevity. And what’s really interesting, we asked a question in a number of ways to a number of different populations of people, essentially, you know, what do you think your chances are that you will live to age 100? And what was really interesting was that, you know, 12 percent of essentially baby boomers said that they have a real chance of living to age 100. Now, we paired that question with, you know, do you think you’ll have the financial resources to actually make it to age 100? And there’s a huge gap there, because on the one hand, you see a significant number of people saying that there’s a realistic chance that they could live to 100. And then you see more people saying that they will not have the resources to live to 100. And we also pair this with questions like the available expectations around Social Security in 30 years. It’s actually a sort of a split audience there. About half of people think that Social Security will be around, half don’t. And then the ability of the younger generation to support people that are living to age 100. And in that case, also, although we found that many people who expect to live to age 100 expect their family to support them. There are some signs in the survey data when we asked the younger generation whether they think they could support their parents, that that that may not be the case. And that spells out, you know, the potential for real financial distress for folks.

Peter Bowes: [00:17:45] And we should say, when you mention Social Security, that this is available only in the United States.

Blair Baldwin: [00:17:50] Correct. This is only in the United States.

Peter Bowes: [00:17:52] Now, as you’ve already mentioned, AgeUp is backed by MassMutual, how significant is that? I imagine very significant to people to know that there is an element of security and longevity in the company that is backing this product.

Blair Baldwin: [00:18:09] Absolutely, because if you think about it, this is a promise that the insurance carrier is making me the promise may not be called for 50 years. And so you want to make sure that the carrier that you are working with is going to be here in 50 years. Now the case of MassMutual, that’s a hundred and seventy years old. So it survived the the Civil War, World War One, World War Two, everything in between and quite literally has the same credit rating as the U.S. government in terms of its financial stability. So this is a carrier that is trusted and that has really stood the test of time. But it’s a great point because it would be awful if you purchased a longevity product and then the carrier that you purchased it from wasn’t around when you went to collect. And so, hence, having very good backing matters a lot.

Peter Bowes: [00:18:58] And I think that question may be more uppermost in people’s minds today than ever before because of the uncertain times that we’re living through with coronavirus and the the lockdowns and people being made unemployed and companies going out of business, people are going to look twice and three times it at any entity that they get involved with. That makes a promise about the future.

Blair Baldwin: [00:19:22] You know, actually, Peter, can I pick up on the thread that you mentioned with with Coronavirus when we went to launch this product a few months ago, it was right in the height of coronavirus. And and we were, frankly, a little nervous about the brand implications of of of marketing longevity insurance, which effectively is in a time when people are so focused on on mortality. And so, again, we sort of went back to the survey drawing board, if you will, and did quite a bit of customer research. And what we found with was pretty fascinating that in the present day, people really are severely impacted by by covid and they’re very clear about that. What’s interesting, though, is when you ask them to imagine the world in 30 years and specifically I’m talking about people in their 60s, late 50s, early 70s. So people who are going to be in their 90s and one hundredth their expectations of the world in 100 years and their own longevity in certain 30 years, it’s remarkably stable. We ran two surveys, one right before sort of covid started spiking and one mid covid and there was almost no difference in the long term perceptions of longevity, although the short term reality of impact on day to day life was was very, very different.

Peter Bowes: [00:20:41] It’s fascinating you say that because I had the same thought process back in March and April relating to this podcast, we talk about longevity, living to a great age. At the time, people were concerned about living till next month and the loved ones as well. And it was more of a survival mode, I think, that most of us went into. But then as time passed, there was a realization that what we do every day as far as our exercise and diet is concerned is key to surviving something like coronavirus and the most healthy amongst us, less obese, physically active and more able, it seems, to fight this virus. And therefore, exactly as you’ve said, that longevity, ideas and perceptions may be remolded and reframed in our minds, but they stay the same in terms of long term goals. And we kind of get over that hump of worrying about just getting through till tomorrow or next week. And there’s a realization that what we do now impacts the very, very long term.

Blair Baldwin: [00:21:44] Absolutely, and stepping back from just the age up example, there’s been a lot of research that in times like these, things like saving rates and preparedness for the future actually go up versus down. And on the surface, you would expect sort of almost a more of a fatalistic approach that that point that you just made about sort of making it, you know, tomorrow. But that’s actually not the reality of people’s behaviors are very, very different. And they tend to actually save more and focus more on the future in these difficult times.

Peter Bowes: [00:22:14] Yeah, and again, there’s a correlation there, people are saving more thinking about the future from a health perspective, people are being cleaner, they’re washing their hands. They’re doing those obvious things that we should perhaps have done more of to avoid the common cold – we’re now doing it to avoid coronavirus, and that we are more acutely aware of those things that we can do to protect ourselves into the future. It’s fascinating to me that this correlation that honestly I hadn’t thought about before in terms of our financial futures can be compared with our physical and health futures.

Blair Baldwin: [00:22:47] Exactly, yes.

Peter Bowes: [00:22:49] The other thing that interests me about what you’re doing and you and you’ve referred to it, there’s nothing quite like this. You are – there’s that word ‘disrupting,’ disrupting the system, aren’t you? I’m wondering from a personal perspective, what is your drive, what’s your motivation, knowing what you do about finance to disrupt the system?

Blair Baldwin: [00:23:06] So I think there’s two answers to that, Peter. The first is, by nature, I’m just intellectually curious. And when I stumbled on this longevity issue, it was just fascinating. And I really wanted first just to to build a product that it solves for real longevity risk. And that’s more of just a personal disposition. But on the personal side, other than personal disposition, I grew up very close to my grandparents on my father’s side, and both of them were lucky enough to live into their late 90s. And I was sort of along the journey the whole way. And, you know, the last few years get very, very expensive. And so when we started working on this concept, it had real emotional resonance to me because I could think back just a few years when I was going through and living this with with my aging grandparents and sort of playing the hypothetical like what if what if we did have, you know, an extra, you know, 5000 dollars a month to help support them in their older years. And so the work just became all the more personal and meaningful.

Peter Bowes: [00:24:12] And I’m wondering, from what you’ve learned not only from the finance world, but while you’ve been delving into longevity, and this is a question I often ask people on this podcast about what you’ve learned and how you maybe apply it to yourself with your own lifestyle and your own perspective about living a long, healthy life. I use the phrase repeatedly, healthspan as opposed to lifespan and healthspan is still new to a lot of people. The concept that we can be agile and vital and intellectually curious and involved to a very, very old age, as opposed to just living to a very old age and the heart beating, but perhaps not being physically able to do much. That healthspan is the main focus. And I’m wondering from what you’ve learned about perhaps both industries, the healthspan industry, if you like, and finance as well. Do you have a different perspective yourself about growing old?

Blair Baldwin: [00:25:06] To be honest, my perspective is is pretty much unchanged in that I knew that healthy lifestyle and healthy living were were important before, intellectually. But now that I’m working in this space, I feel that on an emotional level is something that I should pay more attention to in terms of my own physical health and well-being, things like stress levels and diet. It really has brought home sort of lifestyle issues. So, yes, I feel it now in addition to intellectually understanding it before.

Peter Bowes: [00:25:36] Has covid changed your day to day lifestyle? Clearly, it’s changed all of us in terms of the way that we communicate with each other, but other other aspects of covid that have made you rethink how you live your life every day?

Blair Baldwin: [00:25:51] Well, on the positive side, you know, covid has we have a four year old and a six month old and the   six month old was born March 12th. So the absolute peak of covid, at least we’re in Boston. And that’s when Boston was going through, you know, quite, quite a scare. And the result of this is we’ve had actually a lot of glorious family time. And so the benefit of covid is is really bringing to the forefront the importance of family time because we’re out now all together and we we physically don’t see other people and we just spend a lot more time together and it’s been wonderful. So that sort of return to almost a simpler time is actually a very good thing. And I think we’ll cause a lot of people, myself included, to really question future sort of work patterns.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:37] It’s interesting you mention children, almost everyone I interview for the podcast when we talk about the motivation to live long and healthy. Almost everyone mentions their children as a reason to want to stay as healthy as possible, as old as they get, so they can be around for their children to share in their children’s lives, perhaps share some of their wisdom with their children. And this, in some senses, goes right to the heart of what we’re talking about and your product, because children are crucially involved in the decisions of their parents as they get to a very, very old age. And you can see, as you’ve just nicely described, you can see that family bond, if you like, taking yourself through your life right to the very end.

Blair Baldwin: [00:27:21] That’s a great point, Peter. You know, when we design this product, we actually design it for two different use cases, if you will, in mind when you use case is for people who are in their 50s, 60s and early 70s to essentially insure themselves for their own longevity risk. But the second use case and the one that we actually launched first in the market was something very different. And it was aimed for millennials and for the younger Gen-X people who have baby boomer parents and who realized that their parents have real longevity risk and their parents may not have the finances to match basically their financial needs with their longevity. And so we we created that use case. So people in their 30s and 40s could buy this very low cost financial product to support their parents, should their parents live that sort of happy path of life into their 90s and beyond and really focused on that intergenerational aspect of your point, sort of everybody sort of going together with it? It’s been interesting because you got to essentially play with both sides of the same coin, with the same product design.

Peter Bowes: [00:28:24] And you mentioned that you started the major part of the launch of this was at the height of covid, and that’s when you were thinking about it and beginning to promote it and perhaps reframing your ideas in terms of how you could promote it. I’m wondering now is we’re getting towards the end of the year. How’s it going?

Blair Baldwin: [00:28:40] So it’s interesting, when we launched the covid, we we almost didn’t want to use the word longevity or long life again because it felt so charged back in the spring with the height of covid. And so as a result, a lot of our advertisements were, I think, more the language of annuities, talking about guaranteed income and things like that. We found that that really didn’t work. And what we are now going to is where we started, which is actually focusing on healthy lifestyles and people who aspire to live into their hundreds and beyond. And so over the last six or seven months, our own messaging and marketing has really, really evolved to where it should have been in the start, which was focusing on on the longevity piece. We just wanted to be very sensitive when we first launched because it was such a difficult time.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:28] And I’m wondering, the thought just occurred to me, I.m wondering if someone who enters into this kind of plan as they’re getting older and we can only imagine and guess what it’s like to be in our 80s, approaching our 90s in terms of our mindset, but knowing that we have this potential income to come. I wonder how maybe neither of us can answer this question, but I wonder how it will affect our mindset, as were in those years, just before getting the money, if you like,

Blair Baldwin: [00:29:57] Yeah.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:57] Or getting the income. And I asked that because one of the common traits that I’ve seen in terms of very, very old people just keeping going and keeping going from the next month to the next year to the next year, it’s sometimes because they’ve got something to look forward to. And families are a big part of arranging things for older people. It could be a party. It could be an event. It could be a book club. It could be a conversation over coffee with your best friend. But it’s always something happening tomorrow. Pets come into this as well.

Blair Baldwin: [00:30:26] Mm

Peter Bowes: [00:30:27] People

Blair Baldwin: [00:30:28] Hmm.

Peter Bowes: [00:30:28  ] Feel as if they’ve got something to live for because they’ve got their pet. And there’s a psychological element of just keeping going because you’re always looking forward. And I’m just wondering if this could play into that.

Blair Baldwin: [00:30:41] I think it absolutely, absolutely could. I think the other dimension here is that worries about money and finances are intricately linked with stress and anxiety. And so if you have fewer worries about money and finances, especially when you imagine the future state, that can only help lower your levels of anxiety and can only sort of correlate to more healthy, healthy lifestyle, essentially, and a better chance of of of living a very long life. And I’ll also add that, you know, we did a lot of interesting survey work again around beliefs around what it was like to be what it would be like to live to 100. And the top concerns were after sort of losing the physical and mental mental sort of mobility and capacity. We’re actually around finances, not having enough money and not becoming a burden. And so this product also helps people not become a burden, and it actually relieves the anxiety of that as a potential sort of future state, which, again, can only help people on that longevity march.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:43] And I think that’s a nice way to end this, because you very effectively, I think, sum up the motivation to do that. Blair, this has been a really fascinating conversation. Thank you very much indeed.

Blair Baldwin: [00:31:54] Oh, thank you, Peter, so much.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:56] And I know that financial matters can be complicated and difficult to digest, and I struggle as much as anyone. If you would like more information about AgeUp to dive a little deeper into the subject, go to Age-Up.com. You’ll find a lot of detail there and you’ll find the website details in the show notes for this episode at our website. That’s LLAMApodcast.com – L-L-A-M-A podcast dot com. A reminder that you can now listen to us on multiple podcasting platforms, including Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Google podcasts, Spotify. And now we’re also available at Amazon Music podcasts. Just go to their site music.amazon.com/podcasts or download the app and you’ll find us in their directory. Just search for Live Long and Master Aging. The LLAMA podcast is a HealthSpan Media production. If you enjoy what we do, you can rate and review us at Apple podcasts. You can follow us in social media @LLAMA podcast and direct message me @PeterBowes. It’s always great to hear from you. Many thanks for listening.