Self-Determination Theory

The guys have a great chat about Self-Determination Theory in this episode – don’t worry, whilst the inspiration for this episode is academic, they take the general principles and how you can apply them to financial decisions. With great examples to illustrate the tricky bits and brilliant take-aways you can apply to improve your wellbeing, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

 

Welcomes and Introductions

From teething babies and groggy presenters to moving house

• Link to Chris Budd’s book The Vanishing Point
• Link to David Lloyds audiobook An Unwelcome Connection
• Link to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing book

What is todays podcast all about?

The guys talk about Self-Determination Theory, which is a psychological theory about what motivates us to do things. Looking at how we can apply this to various decisions we make in our lives, especially when it comes for our finances for better wellbeing.

#TightAssTommo

Featuring very strange campervans, getting old and not getting caught out!

Todays Topic – Self-Determination Theory

One of the five points of Financial Wellbeing: a clear path to identifiable objectives

To set objectives you need intrinsic motivation

The book that inspired this episode – Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behaviour by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan

Self-determination theory says we are motivated to do something when three key elements are in place:

• Autonomy
• Competence
• Relatedness

Sport example from Producer Tommo

Examples of bad autonomy from Chris and David

The importance of matching personal motivations and company purpose

Competence – it’s more than being good at something, it also needs to give you purpose

In order to be motivated and engage with finances you need to feel competent, that you can control the outcome

Neil Bage and our money behaviours:

• Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk
• Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability

Competence around money can be hard to achieve, so we look to experts for guidance

Motivation and competence

Putting self-determination to the test with a positive example from David

Using self-determination theory to make a financial plan:

• Work out what you want to do in life
• Use your skills and abilities to help your community
• See a better future self to encourage you to save more

Community wellbeing

Applying self-determination theory to retirement

• Planning for a meaningful and fulfilling retirement
• Link to the retirement study
• Retirement on your terms

Conclusions from the guys

 

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop

 

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Transcribe of the Podcast Script

David 0:08
Hello everybody and welcome to what is unbelievably episode 77 of the financial wellbeing, podcast, my name is David Lloyd, and I’m here with my two good buddies to talk about all the things by financial. Good buddy, number one, introduce yourself . . .

Chris 0:26
Which ones that?

David 0:27
Well you have to feel that you sit within this organisation

Chris 0:35
Tommo a fter you, you are clearly the favourite

Producer Tommo 0:39
Take that gladly. Tommo. I am a chartered financial planner and director over at Ovation Finance in Bristol, where I do financial planning as a day job. And then I also do some stuff with the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing where I am also a director. Father of two, tired, but yes. Overall contented

Chris 1:05
Teething baby is that right?

Producer Tommo 1:07
Teething baby .Yes, so if I’m a little bit groggy this morning ,you now understand, but yeah, this, this too shall pass.

David 1:16
It’s alright in thirty two years time, they’ll come to you and say give me lots of money to buy a house, and you will.

Producer Tommo 1:23
The pain never stops

David 1:26
Chris who are you?

Chris 1:28
Chris Budd, I wrote the Financial Wellbeing book. I write novels. So, latest novel Vanishing Point is out – always be closing. Doing very well, really good reviews. Got a really good review this morning. So that’s cool. And I’m also looking at coffee this morning because I have a wife and her best friend read say last night and they were up to 2 the morning, outside the bedroom window, talking and drinking wine, so I am also a little groggy.

David 1:56
Thanks, well I’m not that groggy at all today I have to say.

Chris 1:59
Who are you David?

David 2:00
Sorry, yes, I’m David Lloyd. I’m a writer, boradcaster, actor, and recently retired actually but we’ll come on to more of that a little bit later in Tight Ass Tommo Tips. But yeah, so Irecently moved house, that’s probably my big news. So I’m not groggy, but I am physically very tired because I’ve spent the past few weeks, packing boxes, moving boxes, unpacking boxes. Getting it set up, it’s been two weeks now, and it’s starting very very slowly, to come together but I reckon we’ve got about half the boxes out so far.

Chris 2:38
And the regulars on the podcast would be interested to know the scenes when you were moving from one house in the village to another house in the village, when we had 300 people in long line all passing boxes between them, that saved you removable costs, it was amazing day wasnt it.

David 2:51
If only that was true. What actually happened was we moved on the day of the England v Germany game. Of course that kicked off at five o’clock, so I had, like eight guys in two huge vans, came my house in the morning, loaded up all my stuff they’ve done it by one o’clock and they drove for half a mile to the new house. And I said, Don’t worry, I’ll get the keys very soon. So it quarter past three, I finally get the keys and let them in. You’ve never seen furniture vans unloaded so quickly. The thing is they all wanted to get off and watch the football, and it got to just before five o’clock and it was all done and they hadn’t quite been able to get everything in so they got some stuff on the drive of my old house – the new people were moving in. And they said, Oh, we’ve got to go now because the drivers allocated all this time, you can’t do anymore, And I said guys, you still some stuff on the drive. He said, will come and pick that up tomorrow, but it might rain tonight, these are paintings and stuff like that. And in the end, I managed to conjoul some of them. And I said, I’ll come with you to go with them to pick up the rest of my stuff, bring it back, we got it offloaded and off they went. At four o’clock the following morning I woke up in a cold sweat because our house and all the boxes. And I realised that my partner Gail’s stuff because we were moving in together was being delivered that day and we didnt have anywhere to put it! I then had to reorganise the garage and eventually they slowly trying to work out how to fit into one and it’s a logistical challenge but a very enjoyable one.

Producer Tommo 4:59
Who’s winning that battle?

David 5:01
Well, let’s say I am somebody that likes to plan ahead and likes to generally have a plan in life so because I did in my previous 25 years, I’ve been gradually clearing it. Going into the loft, throwing out a hell of a lot of historical stuff. So I pretty much everything that I brought the stuff that I felt that I needed. Gail is very much in the last minute.

Chris 5:28
Does she listen to this podcast?

David 5:33
She may well do and she will acknowledge this. And so she therefore ended up bringing a lot of, I want to say crap I’m not sure I can say oh crap, I’m going to say historical legacy items with her.

Producer Tommo 5:47
Aka crap!

David 5:49
And let’s just say that I’m now on first name basis with the men at the tip. It’s you know, something we’ve been talking about, planning for a while and now we’ve finally done it, and it’s a lovely house. You guys must come around and see for yourself and help unpack some boxes!

Producer Tommo 6:07
Absolutely, well I’m delighted to hear that it’s gone well because we’ve talked about it for quite some time now. It’s exciting. I’ve seen some pictures of you. Jelous

David 6:16
Yes, I subsequently discovered in the parish council. And we had a planning meeting the other day with the North Somerset planners talking about potential and I realised that the two lovely fields at the back of my house which are Greenbelt have actually been earmarked for deveopment. But I don’t think that will actually happen.

Chris 6:40
Not as long as you are on the parish council

Producer Tommo 6:43
hearing here is automatically thought when you heard parish council, you know,

David 6:50
I’ve never had it on the podcast I just walk along anyway, I’m sure, delightful that we find that people haven’t tuned in to hear about the consistency to my house. So let’s crack on with the podcast. I just want to go back Chris because you mentioned the financial wellbeing book, and I think it’s worth mentioning at this point that, That’s a book, of course all the proceeds of that go to paypal. And I think that’s important that perhaps we could, you know, we can never emphasise often enough, really, because, hey, it’s a really interesting book. Because all the podcasts that we’ve done over the years. All 77 of them, but also raising money.

Chris 7:31
I just mentioned, it’s all the proceeds, it’s not even profit so basically paid for that book to be produced, and it’s every penny that comes in from the sale of it goes depending on.

David 7:41
Thanks for the clarification right what’s on today’s podcast.

Chris 7:44
Well, I just lifted this up very nicely, because we’re going to talk about motivation, determination theory, which is a psychological theory about what motivates us to do things and maybe later on we’ll bring back whether giving removal met a deadline of five o’clock to go watch a video pick up what what is

David 8:02
perfect motivation.

Chris 8:03
That’s a really good example as we apply it to various decisions we’ve made to our lives, self determination theory and motivation.

David 8:11
Brilliant. Now let’s go on to the probably most important this is, this is an item of something that people tune in to the podcast for that. They don’t want to hear Chris talking about self determination theory, they want to hear Tight Ass Tommo’s Tip of the Day. To find out how we can save money but before we do that, Chris, have you got anything?

Chris 8:36
I do actually , if you, I want to think about cards.i ‘m ot a car, man, particularly I don’t really understand cars, but I saw a brilliant, tip for how to save money with your car. You want to own a car which is a smooth, easy run, low cost to ensure, excellent visibility, especially at the rear, then why not buy a second hand herse. They are deemed low risk by insurance so the insurance is low, and they are very roomy, with a surprisingly large group. In fact, you could either use it to double up as a camper van and save money on holidays as well.

David 9:12
I could do all my trips in the tip.

Chris 9:20
This is the thing, you can buy second. And then very low insurance.

David 9:26
Well I’ve got one before we come on to Tommo, and my TightAssTommoTip is get old and retire, because I’ve recently, I havn’t really retired because I will carry on doing my bits of working. But I’ve now qualified for my state pension. And last month, I got my first state pension payment. All right, I’ve paid into it over the years. All of a sudden, I’m now getting absolutely wonderful. Alongside of that because I am closing down my business, I now no longer need to pay my accountant. My life insurance policy expired on retirement, and so I no longer pay anymore. I moved house with my partner so therefore our living expenses are lower. So for me, the joy of being a little bit older has saved me a huge a mount of money. So my recommendation to everybody is get old.

Chris 10:28
Something you have managed with aplomb.

David 10:31
Thank you very much. Right now, talking of somebody who is . . .

Chris 10:36
Talking about a plum!

David 10:40
Tommo – what have you got for us today?

Producer Tommo 10:41
Um, yeah, my tip. Should I admit this? I try and pretend I’m not really that tight. You know I’ll buy the round at a pub, remember those, you know, and I’ll spend money on my family. But this one really just shows my true colours. So I’m part of a whiskey club, and every month, a couple of mates and me meet via zoom with a pretence that it’s about trying to catch up. Shooting the breeze and all of that, and it was my turn to choose. And my whiskey choice was a whiskey that I had already been bought as a gift as a thank you for doing something, which I forgot I’d actually sent that picture off to those two chaps, to say look what I got this lovely, I feel made up to day somebody bought me a lovely bottle of whiskey one of my favourites. Two weeks later I told them to buy that bottle of whiskey for whiskey night, and one of them, quite rightly called me up on it, you tight git, you were given that as a gift, and you’ve only decided that that’s the whiskey choice, because that means you don’t have to pay for a whiskey bottle as well. So how about no picking that one. So yeah, if you’ve been caught, caught out so if you’re going to do tips, such as re gifting. You know that old idea that if you get a gift you then gift it to someone else. Try to make sure if you’re going to do that. Nobody knows that it was previously a gift is my tip. Do it but keep it a secret.

David 12:27
That is exactly like the story that initiated this whole thread which is about persuading Chris and your colleague Ian at the time to have a particular lunch because you had a free voucher for it so well.

Producer Tommo 12:40
The lunch was nice, and it saved me some money so what are you going to do about it?!

Chris 12:44
I quite like the idea of going to a dinner party, remember those days. Going to dinner party and taking on a really rubbish bottle of wine, just putting a little note on just like a.on the label or something just see how long it takes to come back.

David 13:07
Okay. Chris, why don’t you introduce our subject for today,

Chris 13:13
Regular listeners will know that one of the five points of financial well being is a clear path to identifiable objectives.

David 13:21
Now I’m going to prove that I have been listening to these podcasts, over the years it’s when you set objectives, you really need intrinsic motivation. Right now Tommo remind us what that means,

Producer Tommo 13:33
Intrinsic motivations. So, extrinsic motivation is something we do for others, such as status or fame, or a deadline, bit like your chaps who we’re desperately trying to watch football David, whereas intrinsic motivations, I think we just do because we want to.

David 13:51
And achieving extrinsic motivations doesn’t increase our wellbeing, whereas achieving intrinsic motivations does.

Producer Tommo 13:59
I don’t see any point in my being here, you can have my job David

David 14:06
I just stoped working, I dont want your job.

Producer Tommo 14:08
Fair enough, you’ve explained it brilliantly.

Chris 14:12
So if we get wellbeing for motivation. I thought it would be interesting to break down what motivations actually are, what are the circumstances needed for us to feel motivated, and what happens when those circumstances don’t occur.

Producer Tommo 14:24
This has particular relevance to major life decisions such as retirement, or job changes. When I help people plan for their retirement, one thing I’m going to want to know is what will they be doing, how would they find meaning and purpose in our retirement? Until we know that we can’t build a financial plan together.

Chris 14:46
But let’s look at what motivates us in more detail and we’ll start to understand how we generate intrinsic motivations for ourselves, and therefore create those clear paths to identifiable objectives.

David 14:57
And this will be the self determination theory that you mentioned at the start.

Chris 15:01
That’s right. So, have you guys come across this phrase before self determination theory?

David 15:05
I haven’t. No, I have to say.

Chris 15:07
So, it’s a theory that’s been around for many decades but it’s really accepted in psychology circles in the mid 80s with a book called Self determination and intrinsic motivation in human behaviour by psychologists and Edward Deci I think it’s pronounced, and Richard Ryan. Look, a word of warning. I have seen that book. And it’s a very academic terms. To be honest, I’ve struggled to find anything about this subject which isn’t really academic in nature. So, it’s also a very thick book and all the books I’ve looked at, I haven’t finished. So I really want to stress that we are not putting ourselves out here as experts of self determination theory, but we’re just taking the general principles and applying them to financial decisions.

David 15:47
I like the way you say you’ve seen that book as opposed to reading it. Oh, it’s a bit thick and there were no pictures. That’s enough caveats to tell us what actually is.

Chris 16:02
Okay so self determination theory says we are motivated to do something when three key elements are in place. Those three key elements are autonomy, competence and relatedness,

David 16:16
okay right okay we’re getting quite academic. Now as you say, what does that actually mean.

Chris 16:21
It means we’re going to do something when we’re making our own choices, autonomy, when we feel we’re able to do the thing, competence, and what it involves helping or working with others, relatedness.

Producer Tommo 16:33
I always think of sport a really good example for this. Now pre children I used to play a lot of rugby there for many years. And that was a choice. So I’ve got the autonomy. Competence, well, some would argue I had that some argue I didn’t, but I felt that I did. So I enjoy doing it. And but the relatedness, actually doing it with teammates was probably the biggest one for me, having that camaraderie, and doing something as a team, always felt great. I always liken it to sport is a good example for, for me,

Chris 17:08
And actually just coming back to the competence bit, you were playing at the level at which you could compete. So you weren’t going to try to play for Gloucester or England you were playing for your local club with people at a similar level to you so therefore that’s how you had the competence.

Producer Tommo 17:22
Correct, correct, which was a half decent level for the listeners out there.

Chris 17:31
I’m currently playing for our local clubs, 3rd team, and it’s great, it’s me, as a 54 year old, and the next eldest is 18.

David 17:43
I am playing with you in that seat this Saturday, so we’re gonna have at least two slips.

Producer Tommo 17:51
That’s an interesting point that you make out sometimes about finding competence level. your competence level may change with time it might get better, it might get worse or maybe accepting that. You know, again I play a lot of golf now when I can. A lot of golf – that’s a lie, I play when I can steal some time, but a handicap system is great because you always feel as though your a level of competence. So yeah, there’s a point Chris you would want to play firstly in cricket, your competencies is probably better than 3rd team.

Chris 18:19
The 3rd team’s hilarious and Im thinking of writing a blog about it actually because the events are just so funny. My favourite one recently being that we were playing in a ground which had been carved out of a wheat field, literally the corner of the wheat field have been turned into a cricket pitch, and the wheat was all around the boundry. Our captain told one of our 12 year olds, he had to go out into the boundry and he refused on the grounds that he had hayfever.

Producer Tommo 18:45
Anyways, back on topic.

Chris 18:46
All right, yeah I know I can talk about that, that’s far more interesting

Producer Tommo 18:50
For us three, but probably not our listeners.

Chris 18:53
So another example, let’s put this in work terms, I had a job for about 18 months in a sales branch for a pension company. And one of the managers, if you did well with a contact he would take them and put them under his names and he’d get all the work and all the bonuses from it. And it was a really miserable place to work if I’m completely honest. I had competence and knew what I was doing. I had relatedness, the other sales managers and colleagues were great. I didn’t have autonomy, I didn’t have control of my situation, and therefore it was a very unhappy time.

David 19:21
Now I have a very similar thing happened to me when I was a very young. Van driving job, and the boss just took against me, decided he didn’t like me. So I was good at the job, I could drive. I got on well with the other guy. But the boss treated me appalingly and again, I didn’t have that autonomy, I didn’t have this respect, whatever I did. Similarly, I was very very unhappy time.

Producer Tommo 19:51
So, this is interesting. It’s a lesson for any employers, listening to this, or any managers of people, make sure that autonomy is provided in some way. And you’re very likely to have competent staff who want to work with the team. To try and get them that is the last piece of the jigsaw perhaps.

Chris 20:10
Absolutely. And the reason we just laboured with that a little bit maybe is because we want to just point out what happens if you don’t have those three parts to self determination theory. Not only are not motivated but you can have health issues, and you can feel pretty depressed, etc, even lead to mental health issues. So that’s why we’ve just touched on times when we haven’t had them.

David 20:32
So let’s look at these three in a bit more detail then so, for autonomy. This is the feeling that you’re in control, right? That you are in charge of your own destiny, making your own decisions, that’s fine.

Producer Tommo 20:44
I imagine it’s also about living a life which is compatible with what you believe. If you’re doing a job that allows you to make decisions, what the company actually does isn’t aligned with your personal beliefs and purpose. Then you are unlikely to be very motivated or happy,

Chris 21:02
Yeah exactly, so matching personal motivations and company purpose, is one of the things I talk about a lot when I’m helping owners with employee ownership for example in succession planning. It’s a reason why achieving extrinsic motivation doesn’t fullfil wellbeing, There’s going to be rewarded for doing something with money. But the thing you are doing is not something that makes you proud. Then you aren’t going to get much wellbeing doing it,

David 21:26
how does that explain why bankers are paid so well but nurses so poorly,

Chris 21:31
Completely, absolutely. The pay for jobs that deliver little in the way of purpose needs to be that much higher than jobs, which deliver huge amounts of purpose. It also suggests that money isn’t the only motivator when doing the job. Saying thank you all well done to someone, when they’ve done a good job is going to give them high levels of autonomy, as well as competence and relatedness, as it happens.

David 21:51
Now that leaves nicely on to the second of the three elements of motivation then, competence.

Chris 21:57
Which means being good at something, but it’s a bit more than that, it’s not just ability or talent, it’s about being good enough at the thing that gives you purpose. You want to care about the thing, and you want to be good at it, which means being at least competent enough to be able to control the outcome.

David 22:14
And one of the five pillars of financial wellbeing having control of daily finances so that would suggest that competence is right at the heart of what we’re talking about

Chris 22:23
It is, we want people to engage with their finances, but that means they need to feel competent to be able to control the outcome, in order to be motivated to engage with their finances.

Producer Tommo 22:35
This is probably one reason why people go to an expert perhaps. In this case a financial planner, competence, doesn’t need to just come from yourself, It can come from a combination of sources. I’m not especially good at cooking. But I can follow a recipe – put a cookbook in front of me, and I can make a competent meal, but I do need that external help. But with that, I feel competent.

David 23:02
Similarly, I mean I can cook without the recipe, and although I’m not an idiot when it comes to money, I don’t want to be an expert, which is why I use Ovation as my financial planner.

Chris 23:12
We’ve also got to remember that we deal with money decisions from a position of fear, something that Neil Bage talked about long ago podcast, do go back and listen to those becausethey are fabulous. Our brains aren’t built to think about abstract notions such as money. So competence around money actually very difficult to achieve. And that’s why we are here 77 episodes, we’ve got these five pillars, so the people have got a pathway to follow to grow competence, and therefore be more likely to get a handle on their relationship to money, and that pathway is in the financial well being book, which is actually specifically why I wrote it so that people who couldn’t afford an expert themselves, still had some expertise some other guide for them.

Producer Tommo 23:55
Another interesting aspect of competence is that people will feel more motivated if they perceive that they are competent, which we can affect. If you give somebody a pat on the back, or say well done or Thank you. This increases their intrinsic motivation because of their need for competence. Yeah, I’m just, just just going to touch on that, David, that might feel as though it’s contradictory to the extrinsic because you’re getting a pat on the back from somebody – that’s not the reason you’ve done it, it just enhances that feeling of competence which is intrinsic,

David 24:29
What a fantastic point you make there Tommo, an incredibly competent point you make there at exactly the right time.

Producer Tommo 24:37
Thank you, thank you, I’m feeling all manner of motivation right now.

David 24:42
What about a third of these three parts to self determination theory, relatedness.

Chris 24:48
This is all about the issue that we’re motivated by having a connectedness to others. That might be helping somebody else, to be working with something and somebody else or having a relationship to others in the thing that you’re wanting to be motivated to do.

Producer Tommo 25:02
And I fit in with everything we’ve covered over the last five years, about the importance of the quality of social relationships to our overall wellbeing, not only do social relationships make a big difference to our well being. It turns out it’s a big part of this wanting to do something in the first place.

Chris 25:20
So let’s put this to the test the self determination theory, we gave a few examples earlier where we did jobs where we were unhappy, David, can you think of the time when you were very happy doing a job that you really enjoyed. Did you have those three component parts of self determination.

David 25:38
Ultimately I did, but you know what I talked about the van driving job that I did earlier and through my lates teens and early 20s I wont say I wasted my life but I certainly didn’t have any strong sense of motivation about what it was that I wanted to do, I didn’t have any ambition. So I worked to earn money. So I worked as a van driver, I worked in a pub, I worked I worked herding cattle in the cattle market, I worked in a circus, I did various clerical and van driving jobs, I did all sorts of different things. But I’ll be doing them so that I had enough money to live. So although there were aspects of some of those jobs that I enjoyed genuinely I didn’t enjoy them at all and then in my mid 20s I went to university to do a drama degree. That’s when I discovered ambition, that’s when I decided I wanted to be an actor and then subsequently a writer, and really ever since then I have to say that I’m very happy with my work, you know, sometimes aspects are less exciting. And it’s interesting that you asked me that because I think the reason that I am generally very happy with my work is that I have all of those three things. You know, I have control over what I do, I do think I’m pretty good at what I do. And, and I enjoy working with other people. So I’ve been very fortunate. I know some other people of my age, who’ve been doing their job all our lives and perhaps recently they couln’t wait to retire, they couldn’t wait to stop working. I have to say, I’m looking forward to not having to work so much, but I also want to carry on working not just for the benefits that the money will bring them because I’ve going to enjoy it.

Chris 27:16
So we’re gonna come back to that. There is another interesting aspect of what we’ve been talking about David, but let’s apply, lets specifically apply the self determination theory in other ways. Let’s use it to encourage people to make financial plans. If people spend time working out what they would like to do in life, it gives them autonomy, uses their skills and abilities, brings them into a community, they might see their future self better, which will in turn encourage them to save more.

Producer Tommo 27:43
It’s interesting you mentioned that community wellbeing. Which is another aspect as well as social wellbeing can give us a boost, but let’s get practical here and apply self determination theory to being motivated to save. Saving can give us autonomy. That’s because we become less reliant on others. Partners, parents, or a bank to fund our goals. You can feel competent, because you’ve gained some control over your finances. And the relatedness. You come from knowing that you are a clear path to achieving your intrinsic motivations, which often include spending time with others, and the social elements that you have in your life, and also that community wellbeing we touched on. I can’t stress enough that if you’re really struggling to think about what do I want to do in the future, perhaps look at engaging with the community. Volunteer work that sort of thing. And your social relationships is a great starting point because there’s tonnes of evidence to show that that really can drive long term happiness,

Chris 28:51
And just stress, when we talk about community, we do mean your local literally community, but we’re also talking about any form of groups of people, as a community, so it could be the cricket club or rugby club or it could be your local cities or areas.

David 29:06
Yeah, now I talked quite a bit about retirement in today’s podcast but Tommo touched on it earlier so I imagined another place that, that we could apply this to and I’d be very interested to hear more about this actually would be retirement.

Chris 29:20
Well one of the things, I said we would come back to this, you in your retirement have joined the parish council. And the reason for that is because you do have a lot of knowledge and expertise in a local area, a lot of intelligence and stuff to bring to it, you have the competence. I don’t know about the autonomy in a parish council maybe we need to bring Jacki Weaver in to make a comment on that one. But you most definitely we get relatedness and community from it. So that’s why you’re doing that with your time. We’ve mentioned before an Age Concern survey year two ago, concluding that those who reported the highest levels of well being in retirement, were those who also said they were living a life of meaning and purpose. Intrinsic motivations are such a key part of financial well being. So we want to consider what we will be doing in retirement, which will give us purpose and meaning, and how we can ensure we have the autonomy, competence, and relatedness to achieve that motivation, to create that motivation.

Producer Tommo 30:13
Retirement planning is about much more than just putting money into a pension or paying off a mortgage. Going into retirement can be a, very strong word but, traumatic experience. For some, especially if you haven’t planned for it. You know in a career, you have a role to play. Perhaps people need you, or look to you for advice, and access to your expertise. You might have reached a position where you have a degree of control autonomy over what you do, you’re seen as to have knowledge and therefore competence, and you work with colleagues, to have the relatedness. Then you retire. And suddenly, all of that is gone. How are you going to replace those connections, that role he performed and the respect you received. This is something that you should think about long in advance, so that you know how much you need for meaningful and fulfilling retirement. Chris,tell us, I’ve heard it before, but about the stained glass window maker.

Chris 31:16
Yeah, so there’s a guy we met at local craft fair at Tyntesfield, National Trust house. And he made a glass window for us, and it’s a beautiful thing in our kitchen door and we got chatting to him and turns out he worked for a bank for many many years. But he knew that what he really wanted to do was make stained glass windows. So that gave him a real focus to save, so that he could give up his job at the bank, set up a studio at home, go to craft fairs to pick up work, and set up a little business making stained glass windows because that’s what gave him creativity, purpose, etc. And he’s really good as well, lovely, lovely, chap. So I always quote my stained glass window maker, as if you can envisage what you want to do, it will help motivate you to save and to look after your finances.

Producer Tommo 32:04
And I will just add here, if you really are enjoying what you do for a living. Don’t think that just because the generation before you retire at 65, for example, you have to.

David 32:16
Absolutely I just like to butt in now, that’s that’s the point I talked about in retirement. I have reached the state pension age. However, I don’t intend to stop work, because I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it.

Producer Tommo 32:27
And I just want to put that out there retirement is a word that we all use because we’re used to it. Perhaps it’s a point that you’re working because you want to not because you have to. So just if you’ve got something in your life you really enjoy, we dont want to force people to stop working, there’s more intrinsic motivation to talk to them. But the secret to having a happy retirement is to crack self determination. You’re trying to find autonomy, competence, and relatedness, in the final chapter of your life can be tricky. However, you need to find it before. If you do, you’re likely to set up a fruitful retirement. In fact, evidence shows the importance of self determination in pre retirement, leading to a more fulfilled retirement. This research, which comes from a study that we’ll include a link for in the show notes, showed that retirees have higher levels of intrinsic motivation and knowledge stimulation and accomplishment, rather than extrinsic activities. It also suggests that intrinsic motivation for both accomplishment and stimulation positively related to satisfaction with retirement, over and above other factors, even help you have that hope is really stressing that we need to be finding the type of autonomy, competence and relatedness to provide ourselves with a happy retirement, a secret to a happy retirement, perhaps, and ultimately a happy life.

David 34:02
And, as ever, while Chris and I waffle on about our own personal stories about golf and cricket Tommo nails it puts it in a nutshell. Well I really enjoyed today’s podcast guys, I think we’ve covered a wide range of topics here, and I hope that the people at home, you might be out there that you might be at somebody else’s home. But whoever is listening to this I hope you found something useful. And I hope you’ll tune in again. When I decided to do one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

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