About Kwame
People weren't ready for how long retirement would last. It showed up in their purpose, their money, their homes, their health, and their relationships. That's why I co-founded Next Chapter Media, and why I speak.
Where this started
I started where the need was most basic: helping people get food assistance. Then the questions grew. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Disability. For more than 15 years I've answered them, first one person at a time, then on video for an audience that grew past 365,000 adults over 55.
When you spend that long that close to a community, you notice what the statistics don't show. The people writing to me had done what they were told. They worked. They saved what they could. They claimed their benefits. And a few years into retirement, many of them were in trouble, not because they'd done something wrong, but because the retirement they'd planned for was the old one. A few years of rest. The one they were living was 25 or 30 years long, and few people had planned for that.
The same five problems kept showing up.
You are not right or left leaning, just the facts. So many other so-called experts use scare tactics and false information.
Thank you for an easily understandable explanation of Social Security changes. You are an excellent teacher.
The five problems
Sometimes it starts with an empty Tuesday, a bill you read twice, or a towel rack you reach for. In fifteen years of emails, comments, and live Q&As, I've heard the same five moments over and over. If you're within ten years of retirement on either side, you'll recognize at least one. They became the Next Chapter Five, and they're the reason Next Chapter Media exists.
At a family gathering, someone asks what you've been doing since you stopped working. You smile and say, "Keeping busy." On the drive home, the answer bothers you. You spent years being counted on. You still have decades of skill and judgment, and you still want to contribute, maybe earn a little, and have something to look forward to on Monday. That part of retirement deserves a plan too, and the old retirement never asked for one.
At the checkout, you put one item back after seeing the total. It's a small choice, but lately there are more of them. You wonder whether you claimed Social Security at the right time, and whether your Medicare plan costs more than it should. Those two decisions were worth more than most people realize. And money pressure doesn't just shrink the budget. It makes the purpose question sharper: what is this chapter for, if I'm only trying to get through it?
You step out of the bathtub and reach for the towel rack to steady yourself. Nothing happens, and you go on with your morning. But the moment stays with you. This is your home. You know every room, and you want to stay. Then you think about the stairs, the front steps, and how far away the nearest person who could help lives. Wanting to stay and having a house that's ready to let you are two different things, and most people have only done the first.
You carry the bags in from the car and stop halfway to the kitchen to set them down. You used to make that trip without thinking. You planned for the house and the car. Few people sit down to think through the physical strength a long retirement will ask of them, and what happens if their knees, hips, or balance begin to fail. Health turns out to be the biggest line item in a 30-year chapter, in dollars and in years, and the habits that protect it still work after 60. Most people were never told that.
You sit at the kitchen table with a stack of papers about a decision that matters. Your spouse is worn out from caring for a parent, and you don't want to add one more worry, so you read the pages alone. The friends who came with the job faded when the job did. Even with family close by, the big decisions, when to claim Social Security, which Medicare plan, whether to stay in the house, often fall to you alone. For many people, facing decisions this big with no one to talk them through is the loneliest part of retirement.
What I did about it
I co-founded Next Chapter Media to meet those five problems where people actually are: on their phones and their TVs, in plain language, with no panic, no politics, and no products to sell. Benefits Insider, The Retirement Navigator, and The Morning Step each take a piece of it. The books take the two decisions that matter most.
Speaking is how I take the same message to the people who can act on it at scale: the financial firms, employers, and associations whose clients and members are walking into the new retirement right now. Education first, so it's easy to clear through compliance, and built so that the firm that brings me in becomes the guide.
My own story overlaps with theirs. I built a company to more than $60 million in total sales, won a deal on Shark Tank, was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Maryland, and then watched that company close. Rebuilding taught me what I now tell every room: you don't start over from zero. Age gives you experience, wisdom, and perspective, and a 30-year retirement spent winding down wastes all three.
Today I teach finance at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School, and I've been a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization since 2014. Everything I do exists so that when one chapter ends, the next one is already yours.
Book Kwame
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