The Importance of Place in Longevity Planning with Ryan Frederick

Excited for this conversation.

[00:00:46] Doug Heikkinen: So for listeners who are new to you and Here, what is place planning and how did you come to focus your career on helping people align on where they live and how they want to live for their second half of life?

[00:01:00] Ryan Frederick: It's a great question. I'm not so sure it's what my mom imagined when I was growing up. Yeah, I, at my heart, Doug, I'm an innovator. I think about, a little bit a futurist. Where's the world going? You know, how can we make it better? I had a stint in Silicon Valley working with several startup companies, venture capital backed, early in my working career.

And I, when I went to business school at Stanford, they encourage you to go change the world, you know, big ideas. And I really got hooked on this idea, and this is 20 years ago now, really hooked on the idea that people are living longer. And especially at the time there was less of a focus on, how can we innovate about living longer and how do we know living longer can also be living better? And I was curious kind of growing up about the role that place has in shaping our lives. And so I'd say 20 years ago, in some respects is where it started, Doug, because I had a internship with a senior housing company. No prior background.

And one of my stipulations was to live in a senior living community so that I could see what it was like, just the environment. And that's where I first, really first got to see, design thinking, seeing people in their environment, what I learn, what impact did it have on people. And that's really launched this perspective around an appreciation for why where we live shapes us more than we shape place. And that insight has led to a series of things. Led to writing a book several years ago, called Right Place, Right Time. Seeing the ripples of that as people grab this as, wait a second, I haven't really, I don't, I haven't understood previously necessarily how important places in shaping my life, my purpose, my social connections, my health habits, my financial wellbeing.

That's a really important one here. And that aha, and then seeing people engage in the content, and ultimately now a process I've created to actually create a place plan, led me to the conviction that this is so important that it deserves its own discipline. Its own discipline. We need a term for it.

We need a way for people to understand that it's not an intellectual exercise. Actually it's very practical. And as we're imagining this idea of a hundred year life becoming more somewhat normative in the world and the era that we're moving into, being intentional about these big decisions is just critical, I feel. Planning becomes critical for optimizing the probability of making the most of the lives that we have been given. So that's, it's kind of personal story for mine, I, there was no master plan, just kind of followed the breadcrumbs and really thrilled now to be coming alongside individuals and firms to help people make better decisions about this.

[00:04:10] Doug Heikkinen: You were nice enough to share an actual place plan with me prior to the podcast. And in this plan, you described a Pittsburgh's couples place plan as an outcome of a structured multi-session process. Can you walk us through the key steps of that process and the role you play as facilitator?

[00:04:29] Ryan Frederick: Absolutely. So what's happened, there's a couple different ways, Doug, that people can create place plans. There's a way where people can do it kind of individually, Either, one-on-one or as a couple, facilitated to get to a plan. And then there's ways to do it as part of cohorts where, which a number of wealth advisors have done this, including the example I shared with you, where a wealth advisor says, we've got a number of people asking about this question about place. we see this as an opportunity to differentiate our offering and so on, and we'll come to that a little bit later on, I'm sure in our conversation. But this particular couple, they were part of a cohort and the way the process works today is you you have four sessions.

And there's an online workbook, there's supplemental videos, and there's this facilitation. So we spend a lot of time in the four sessions talking about one specific situation, not just where they are today. That's a very important part of this is like an evaluation of like where today, across the four dimensions I described, of environment, health, community and finances. Where does your current place fit? How much of is a good fit today? But then, it also is a look toward the future, what might change over the next like five years. Not just for you personally, but places change, right? You know, the traffic's worse, or maybe it's more expensive, or maybe crime's an issue, or maybe you don't know your neighbors anymore, or that's more likely to happen.

And so in the process, four sessions and then in the end. People get a customized place plan like you saw, where it takes what is often a very complex situation, it's complex if you're single, it's complex if you're a couple. And really aims to land the plane in plain English. Here's where you are on this journey.

Hear things that you grappled with, that you came up with a conclusion on. And here are some very specific next steps that you can take. And you have a, like a place in time. As of November, 2025. Boom. Here'swhere you were on this particular issue, recognizing that just like financial plans, place plans change because you change. Places change.

There's life transitions that happen. It's complex issues. So it's hard to do it in the, you know, an hour in one sitting. It's not something that has to take a year. I think that's a really important thing in this is like I've found that having four sessions with this workbook that people go through can get to a very good place for your place plan that clarifies it for you, gives clarity, as I mentioned, and then direction to act on it. And the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive in terms of what it's done for people.

[00:07:25] Doug Heikkinen: In the place plan for this couple, you highlight how their home health access, community, and purposes all intersect. How do you help clients see place as more than just real estate and instead as a driver of joy and connection?

[00:07:41] Ryan Frederick: Yeah. It's so important, Doug. It's so important. One of the interesting things about it is you get, as I've worked with different people, there are some that are really excited, you know, to have this bigger conversation about life and what I want my next stage to look like, and let's talk about how place does that. And you have some other people that are like, I don't care about that. I just wanna make sure I have a, you know, a house I like. But what ends up happening, regardless what your entry point is in this, is it opens people's eyes.

And so for people that just see it as a financial vehicle, when they start to go through the workbook, when they spend the time self-reflecting and in conversation, a hundred percent of the time, people are like, wait a second. Yeah, actually these relationships probably matter more than I realize. And if I'm in a spot where I'm not close to those relationships, I'm not going to be the person I'd like to be, for example. So I think it's really important. This is what I've done with here and our processes. We frame it from the beginning, like I've described, around those four dimensions, and make this claim that it is drives your joy and purpose. And there's research that supports all of this. But it doesn't really land home until you roll up your sleeves and apply it to your own life, and then it becomes clearer for people.

[00:09:06] Doug Heikkinen: The plan services three parallel paths for this couple: improving their current home, exploring life plan communities, and designing extended travel, which was an eyeopener for me of more that you can do. So how do you help clients get out of their either or thinking and into a more flexible both and approach to the future?

[00:09:30] Ryan Frederick: It's not easy sometimes, Doug, people, I think part of it's a function of aging. I think part is a function of our world is changing so rapidly, it's just hard to keep up. And so sometimes we just wanna hold tight to certain things that we have control over. And it's widely known.

The research indicates the same over and over again, which is about 90% of people want to age in place where they are. But part of that's because people haven't necessarily done the work to think about what the other options are. One of, this really important concept, which I'll raise now, and it's basic, but it's really powerful and that's around opportunity cost thinking. So opportunity costs are the costs of not doing something.

So you're on path A and go down path A, but maybe Path B's better. There's an opportunity cost of choosing A over B, but it doesn't show up as a bill in the mail necessarily. You don't get something that shows up and says, oh, you, you know, had you chosen that you would've this much more money or this much more happiness.

That's not how it necessarily works. But if you don't spend time thinking about, especially at some of these key junctures in life, around what the other options are, you don't know what you're necessarily giving up. Or even if your plan is to age where you are, stay where you are, you can learn things by considering other options.

So Doug, what I found to be very valuable on this is to force people. And sometimes it's, some people warm up to it faster than others, is regardless what you think you want to go do, open up your imagination, and consider three different options. What does it look like if you don't move.

What could you do to improve your current place, either with your, you know, make different friends, be more active, and improve some of the physical dimensions of your place. The second path is you have to move outside of your metropolitan area. What would that be? Think about it. What, like physical dwelling characteristics?

Like imagine for a second. Take just, you know, grab a glass of wine, what could this look like? And the third one is more of a wild card where you're moving somewhere, but it could be just down the street, could be an apartment somewhere. It could be in an urban spot in the metropolitan area you're part of.

And what I found, Doug, is getting people to think more expansively in this, and creatively. It just unlocks a lot of positive energy where people are like, wow, I'd never really thought that way. And sees it less of a hassle thinking about this, but more you start to see the rewards of doing something different than you necessarily would've done not investing in this level of thinking. So even again, most times where people have come in, they've ended up more or less the direction that they thought they would go, but it has a lot of important nuances. So you've seen, just like this couple you mentioned, that dimension around travel was a direct outcome of this exercise. Like, okay, no matter what we do, we need to allocate some time that we're purposefully traveling in different locations. They heretofore, have spent some time in one particular family house. And they're like, actually we could benefit a lot from using that same time in traveling other places.

So it sometimes it doesn't sound like rocket science, but for someone's individual life it can have a huge impact.

[00:13:05] Doug Heikkinen: What are clients telling you they value most about place planning and what surprised you about the feedback? Because you just did a recent survey of advisor firm clients and they showed satisfaction scores nine out of 10, which is incredible.

[00:13:19] Ryan Frederick: I think what's happened, you know, as an entrepreneur, Doug you know, you have hypotheses and I don't know, my hypotheses are often wrong. And, but when, so you see like how do things play out in the real world? And that's why this has been for lack of a better term, Doug, I found it's like magical.

This is a piece I think that people know that's important, but they haven't necessarily thought of it this way and they haven't had a process to follow. And so I've been just, like you mentioned, been really pleasantly overwhelmed with the satisfaction with people's ratings on recommending it to others has a very high net promoter score that are if people are familiar with that, where you weigh heavily on the nines and the tens out of a 10, one outta 10 scale, and then you subtract people that are six and below.

It's been fascinating to see Doug in this. Another key thing that jumps out, one of the highest scores is the question, if you and now having gone through the place planning experience, do you think place planning should be part of comprehensive financial planning and life planning? Oh my gosh.

Everyone's at a 10. And it's just a recognition that this thing matters. We haven't necessarily thought of it this way and there hasn't been a process to follow, but doing the work has led to, again, this ability to then take action on it. Another thing I'll say about the feedback, which has been interesting is that I've had a number of people that have worked directly with Here, not through wealth advisors but, and have had positive experiences. The wealth advisor piece and financial advisor one's interesting because I have found that financial advisors, wealth advisors, they're actually in the place planning business right now.

But they don't know it, or they don't have a term for it. Because their clients ask them, Hey, should I buy this house or move over here? Or in some cases, I already bought this house. Can you justify how much I paid for this? You know, let's make this look good. So they're getting questions, but those questions invariably are financially based, Okay, can you run the numbers for me. And I did a talk just last month in Alabama and there was a wealth advisor firm there. And they said, they talked about, actually, ironically, it was a single person in Alabama who had family in Pittsburgh going back to the example. And she's like, I wanna go to Pittsburgh.

I'm going to go to Pittsburgh. And they're like, okay, well we ran the numbers for, you should go rent, not buy. Well, she just went and she bought something and then she found out, because she had some family in Pittsburgh, but she found out that's not what she wanted. She then sold her place and moved back to Alabama.

And so here's an example of a client that made a bad decision, ultimately. Cost her a little bit financially, energy wise, et cetera. Like had that wealth advisor been able to say, before we run into this, let's just, can we take a month and think this thing through? And then you can have a more calibrated experiment.

Is that the right thing to do? You know, let's make sure you're more, they're more likely to make a good decision. And then as a result, as a wealth advisory firm, your client's going to be happier. And when a client makes a bad decision, whether it's their fault or not, it doesn't reflect well on the whole practice.

Right? You want people to be in good standing. So what happened in the feedback as well for the wealth advisory firm is that people were more likely, more likely by wide margin, to refer other clients to the wealth advisor firm. They said they were, they had higher just satisfaction general that we attributed to the firm.

They had they said, this is interesting, had we known you had this service, we would've been more likely to choose you in the first place. So there was a customer acquisition piece. And then there were some people that have gone through it that said, Hey, I would like to have this place plan with you shared with my adult kids.

And then that is even an opportunity to have a conversation that could lead to participating in the net wealth transfer that may happen over time. So it's, so I've seen strong feedback on the experience for people in their lives, but also some pretty interesting feedback as it relates to how the wealth advisory firm that either connected or sponsored the place planning work and how they perceive that firm.

[00:17:48] Doug Heikkinen: Advisors are always looking for ways to deepen relationships and stand out. Based on the cohorts you run with in wealth advisory firms, how does place planning practically enhance an advisor's brand and increase loyalty and referrals?

[00:18:03] Ryan Frederick: So I think we're in an interesting time, Doug. I am by no means an expert in the wealth advisory field. It wasn't until this place planning evolved that, and responding to it, that it's become an area of focus and interest in how the industry is. I'm on the advisory board of Stanford Center on Longevity, and there's a number of wealth advisors related to that.

And so I've gotten to know how they look at the world. In fact, there's a been a number of conversations that have come out of that, around to what extent is the future of financial planning and wealth planning become closely associated with longevity planning. And so I think you've got, at one level, you've got, and I'm in Austin and then University of Texas at Austin just started, called the Langston Center on Wealth Management.

So you're even seeing universities create now practices dedicated to wealth management. And they're looking at how does this field evolve. So I think what's happening in my view right now, Doug, is that, and I'm going to plead ignorance because I'm new to the scene here, but what might have started as like stock pickers has evolved over time to people really being strong fiduciaries of people's financial wellbeing. Which I've seen now for a number of firms, has evolved to where they're looking at people's lives more holistically, and like, how can we make sure our clients aren't just financially secure, but they have good lives and that we can provide on the margin, resources, and content to make sure they make a series of good decisions along their journey. So that they're not just financially well, but then, they're not good with their health, you know, or they're lonely or different things. So I, as I see it, there's going to be at least some subset of this, of the wealth advisory financial planning field, which is going to lean into this opportunity to have a profound impact on the livelihoods of their clients.

And in so doing, they're going to have clients for life. And they may be as, as you know, with all your work in this, for a number of people, the people they trust first, outside of their family is their financial advisor. They just share so much with them over the years. So I think, the way I see it is, I think there's going to be continued pressure on the core business model of the wealth advisory field because there are going to be new tools, other things that people can lean on for the foundational work around financial planning. And so I think it's going to create an opportunity for wealth advisors, financial planners, to understand, well, what other ancillary areas of expertise can I bring into this relationship that either we deliver directly, we deliver through a partnership, we refer out, because we know it's part of this effort of helping people live the best lives that they can. I happen to believe, based on my instinct and also the feedback I've heard from financial planners and wealth advisors and clients I talked about, that place planning is it's a unique piece of this, Doug, because it's, I describe it as like quasi financianal. Because it absolutely has financial dimensions. You know, for many people a meaningful piece of their net worth is tied up into real estate that they own, whether it's their home or otherwise. So there, it's, a key piece on the finance side, but it's more than finance. And not just that. As we're living longer it's not just what we own, it's also just the cost of living in our situation.

So we might have a home that we own free and clear, and there's cost there for sure, but maybe where we are has higher cost of living that we need to factor in as we're living longer. So, I see this as a very interesting bridge because you're, in many cases wealth advisors are already in this business as I described earlier, but they're not necessarily in it as a comprehensive way to truly help their clients.

I've heard a couple examples of some Austin based RIAs I've met with where they're like, I've spent three years helping clients figure this out. And so we're not, we haven't figured out, it's taken a lot of my time and I haven't had a framework to use. So I think that there's, for a number of wealth advisors to,bring it together here, Doug, I think this is a path that think's going to be along that journey of offering more value for their clients. I think one of the things that wealth advisors are going to have to sort through is, how does this fit into my business model? You know, do I charge more for this? Is it part of what our fees are?

How much do I do? How much do I partner with an organization like Here to provide? I've seen situations where wealth advisors have said for our gold and platinum clients, we wanna offer place planning services, and we're going to just offer that free for those clients because there's so much business we do with, we don't wanna nickel and dime them for stuff like this.

I've had other clients where like, Hey, when we flag people that fit this profile, we know that we're going to refer them over to Here for place planning. So we're helping them, but it's a different business model. So, I don't know, Doug. I think one thing I would say to this particular point is I think that, to do it well, there's a specialized skillset involved and knowledge base to draw from. So I think for most financial planners and wealth advisors, I think there's basic information around place planning, questions to be asked when you have someone come on board, when you do the annual review.

But I don't think you necessarily want, as a financial advisor, wealth advisor to have their time be spent developing place plans. I think that becomes too far off the core competency and highest and best use of people's time. Because it's pretty involved to create the plans. But I think to the extent you kind of partner in the right areas, you get the benefit of that without necessarily, but leveraging your time for other things you that have a higher return for your practice.

[00:24:27] Doug Heikkinen: Okay, we've covered a lot, so last one for you. If a client finishes place planning with you and their advisor, what's different in their life six to 12 months later in their decisions, their relationships, their confidence about the future, and why does that change matter so much for both the client and the advisory firm?

[00:24:44] Ryan Frederick: It's been interesting, Doug, because a really key differentiator, which you point to in the question is there's the planning and then there's the doing. And the planning definitely provides, it can lower anxiety for people because there's these things they've been concerned about and they spent the time now to think them through in a way that they haven't before and get connected to resources.

But a lot of times you're short circuiting the power of the plan if you don't do the doing. And that's why a key part of the place plan are these concrete action steps. You know, as you saw with the example place plan that has items, has timetables, it inherently embeds some level of accountability in the process.

And some of those action steps often involve the wealth advisor. Okay, we've gotta run some numbers if we're going to move to this type of community. What would that look like? But I think what happens, and I've seen this a number of times, Doug, is that people get stuck. And then this process allows them to get unstuck so that they actually, they take action.

So within the six to 12 months, like you're describing, people have really cool stories. There was a couple in Florida that they felt stuck. Within six months, sold their condo, moved back to the Mid-Atlantic where they had family and friends and moved into a more sustainable place for them. Like it allowed them to make the move. It allowed them to make a good decision about the move.

In their situation, they were initially contemplating multiple moves and they were able to just make one move to the right place. Huge difference for them. Huge. In some ways, sort of lifesaving because they look back, how could we have done multiple moves? They just wouldn't have been able to do it. Really cool story of a woman in her mid fifties, a widow in the Philadelphia area.

She, this process, she thought she was going to have to move because she had so many memories in this one home with her now deceased husband, reframed how she thought about it. She, every Sunday now, she hosts a brunch for people to come over. She's totally created this new social network that would've not happened had she not thought about it and give herself the invitation to think about it differently.

So it's been, for me, super fulfilling to see people. Another example, which is different. This is a woman in her early seventies. She lives in Georgetown. And she's like, I'm not sure if this is the right thing for me right now. I know I need to make some changes. I want to do the planning, but I want to give myself a year to have fun.

That's what she did. She created the plan and she spent the better part of the next year just traveling. So it manifests in different ways, but invariably it's led to action for people and also this half glass full thinking, which I think is so powerful. It's not about, especially for people in the second half of life, it's not like, what am I losing? Can't do this. Wait a second. This decision matters and my framing it provides new opportunities that otherwise I wouldn't have thought of. And a lot of satisfaction I get from having that impact.

[00:27:54] Doug Heikkinen: That's fantastic. Ryan, this has been great and incredibly informative. Best of luck to you and thanks for being with us.

[00:28:03] Ryan Frederick: Absolutely. My pleasure, Doug.

[00:28:05] Doug Heikkinen: If you would like to learn more about Here, please visit Here.life. We are on all social media platforms @Advisorpedia. Please give us a follow. For our producer Tory Miller and everyone at Advisorpedia, thank you so much for listening