Can owning a pet actually lead to a happier, more fulfilling retirement? In this episode, we sit down with David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM, to unpack fascinating new research on how dogs, cats, and other family pets impact life in retirement.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, David, it’s always great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
Sure thing.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And, uh, I, you know, I love the, the research that Prudential does. Uh, but this particular piece of research I was kind of smitten with, because as you know, I’m an animal lover, like you, like your wife, and, uh, I’m really interested in how our familial pets impact our retirement. So before we get into the results, what, what in your mind, what was the rationale for including family pets, like dogs and cats in the survey?
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
Well, you know, my, my wife is a veterinarian and so, um, pets are very near and dear to my heart. And so I’m not sure how it came about, but I know this was, this was in last year’s poll survey. We were kind of thinking about different things that could affect retirement.
I was like, I’d love to kind of understand maybe, you know, how pet ownership could be related to different factors when it comes to retirement, but also like, how does it change over time? Right. You know, what does pet ownership look like among retirees?
Just things like that.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So, so is pet ownership predictive of a healthy, long, successful retirement in your, in your, based on the research, you know, I don’t know that we, we quite quantified it that way.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
I think, I think, you know, there, there, there are pros and cons to owning pets. Yeah. Right.
And I think, I think, you know, what, what, what we found, what I found was that, you know, it was, it was pretty similar, um, except that, you know, like dog owners were a little bit, you know, had a little bit better life outlooks than those that didn’t. But there’s a lot of variables that go into this. I mean, like owning pets are expensive.
Um, you know, the ability to own pets varies based upon where you live and things like that. So there’s lots of, I fully acknowledge there’s a lot of imperfections in this analysis, but, you know, we were just curious to what extent, you know, owning a pet could positively negatively impact retirement.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
But you’ve got some good results. I noticed you only had dogs and cats. I did, I used to have hamsters and gerbils.
I presume that retirees probably don’t buy lizards, hamsters, tarantulas, and, and, and the like. Maybe those are more for adolescents or younger people, but, um, you know, dogs and cats bring a lot of joy to a lot of people and they have different, uh, personalities. A dog seems to be a lot more pleasing or wanting to get pleasure.
You know, wanting to get affirmation from its owner, the cat based on my cats, they could care less what I think.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
So we’ve got, we’ve got three dogs, two guinea pigs and a tortoise. And so I think you’re correct. I think, I think like the ownership of pets varies.
The time involved varies. And so I think, I think having a companion is nice, but like one thing that’s really interesting. I think you made this point to some extent is that, you know, pet ownership declined dramatically with age.
Right. So, you know, as individuals get older, the odds of having a pet decline significantly. And when you ask like pre-retirees, like, do you plan on having a pet when you retire, you know, really the only folks that tend to have pets when they retire people who had pets before people don’t, it looks like tend to become pet owners.
It looks like as in that you’re kind of, you’ve done for a long time and you continue that trend when you retire.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
That’s interesting. You know, by the way, my mother grew up with horses. She actually had a horse in retirement.
She loved the horse. She used to go out twice a day to groom him. And it was a feeling of, you know, this was like, you know, my brother and I had both left the nest obviously within our, in our fifties now.
So that was kind of like, she used to refer to the horses as my brother. And so it was, it was a proxy for being able to show love and affection to something that you think that that has brings meaning, meaning to someone’s life. I think, I think it definitely does.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
I think that, you know I mean, my wife first to tell you, like some people treat their pets better than their kids. Right. I think that people, people love their animals.
And so I think that, that, you know, having someone, something that you can spend time with is, is, is very valuable.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. One of the things that I’ve been looking at on the network, obviously there’s a lot of technology you know, it’s a, it’s no secret artificial intelligence the phone. I mean, that just dominates society.
People get lonely even with those technology and it does vary by age. So maybe, you know, lonely, you know, maybe us older folks like you and I were probably from the same generation. We’re okay being alone and reading a book, but some of the younger folks maybe get a little lonely.
I think having an animal that you can connect with, I’m not saying you got to kiss it, you can pet it, you can look at it, you can feed it. It, it, it, it puts a, what puts off that loneliness, I think.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
It does. I mean, so I’m, I’m not a huge fan of our tortoise, you know, I just, you know, I don’t want to pick favorites among the pets, but like, you know, the tortoise kind of does the thing, but you know, we’ve got three dogs and they can be great. Right.
I mean, I think that, you know, for, you know, we’re pretty busy, we’ve got four young kids, we’re doing a lot of stuff. And so we don’t have the time to kind of take the dogs on walks, but like, I think that could be a great activity, you know, to, you know, to get outside, to be among people for retirees that you, that you might not have if you don’t have a pet. So I do see a lot of, you know, positive benefits to pets.
I think that there obviously are expenses we have with pets and some of those can be pretty significant. And so I, well, you know, in the survey, we looked at that too. And there, you know, some people really do budget for pets.
I think pets is like a line item expense that’s very important. And so I think to me that like the key here is, is that, is that, you know, it doesn’t really matter what pet you have. I mean, I’m going to be team dog, your team cat, but it’s important and you find meaning into it.
I think it can create a better retirement.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. And to your point, I mean, we have a, we have two cats, one’s a two year old, the other one’s 22 year old. Last Sunday, coincidentally, I had to take him to the emergency room because he had an earache, you know, I mean, he did not, he actively communicated, Hey dad, I got an earache, but he had an earache cost me $400 David for an emergency room visit.
Now we don’t have pet insurance, but you know, when you look at the line item of expenses and retirement, of course, you’ve got living expenses, like your rent, if you’re renting your mortgage, if you still have a mortgage, you’ve got gasoline, food, et cetera, but this is a line item you probably need the budget for. And maybe you think about, maybe I should have thought about pet insurance.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I, I’m not an expert on pet insurance. I don’t know that insurance very well, but I do think that there are, can be like significant expenses, right.
That you incur with potential, but that can be a huge barrier for owning a pet. And so that needs to probably be accounted for to some extent, we’re thinking about your budget and retirement, especially if you are not really well off in terms of your overall retirement assets.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Uh, in terms of, let’s talk about outlook. I thought, I thought this is interesting because our outlook obviously changes our outlook on retirement, our outlook on life changes as we age, clearly when you’re young and bouncy and supple, uh, maybe you have a little bit more positive outlook, how does, how does age impact the outlook, but also, you know, maybe does the cat or dog or the animal help change the outlook, especially if the, if the dog or cat is maybe a younger animal.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
So we didn’t, we didn’t ask the age of the pet in the survey. So I can’t, I can’t drill down there, but I know that you look at like the different groups within the surveys. These were definitely mass affluent Americans.
We asked the question at different ages and an outlook didn’t, didn’t change much by age. So if you like group people by like, you know, like 50 to 64 and like 65 plus, like it’s, it’s pretty similar in terms of like, like what are the differences? I think, I think where, where the, where like the more kind of like unique differences were in terms of like different, like types, types of pets ownership where like older, older individuals who own dogs or dogs and cats, like you can own a cat as well.
But if you, as long as you had a dog, your life outlook was improving, um, more than individuals who just own cats. So like, if you have a cat and a dog, I think you’re probably fine. But if it’s just a cat and now, but again, like, like there’s a fancy word called endogenous, like people that own cats are probably have different traits that make them want to own cats for zoning dogs.
And so, you know, like I, I wouldn’t say that it’s, it’s, it’s causation, but it may be an interesting correlation.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So do you think this, uh, will cause people to go out to the local adoption shelter? Uh, I, do you think there’s going to be a glut of people who are going to be thinking about retirement? Not only are they thinking about retirement income and savings, but now they’re thinking about, and there’s social security, but now they’re like, Hey, honey, do you want to get a dog?
Do you want to get a cat? Should we go out to the SPCA and try to get, you know, I could see a whole marketing campaign tied to dog adoption and cat adoption at retirement.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
So I don’t think so, but I hope so. Um, we’ve gotten all of our pets from local humane society. So I would, you know, highly recommend, um, anyone that is interested in getting the animal to go to your local humane society, um, pick one up.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So let me, I can’t let you go because I always like to tease out, you know, I’m a big fan of research. I know you and other, and your, and our peers are your peers, not my peers, your peers in the, uh, industry are always creating new research. What, what can we look forward to?
Can you give us a little bit of a tease of what to expect, you know, with the fall months are coming up Halloween, uh, Thanksgiving, anything that you can tip us off on and what’s coming up?
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
Yeah. So a lot of what we’re working on now is this idea of like what, like there’s a lot of barriers that exist for individuals to spend in retirement. Um, like the decumulation puzzle, like people have, they get to retirement, like they don’t spend their money.
Like, it’s really kind of this fascinating thing where you, you spend decades, you know, being an ant and you just can’t become a grasshopper. And so it’s like, what are the different things that you can do to kind of give yourself a license to spend? And I’ve looked at this a lot with Michael Fink is the American college, you know, focused on like annuities, like lifetime income annuities, but we’re doing more on like, we got like life insurance, like how widows spend.
What are the different tools that we can use to better help retirees unlock that, that willingness to spend that we’re just not seeing today?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. I wonder if you get locked, you know, without even looking at the research or even, you know, I don’t want to prejudge the research, but I wonder if people are just like, you just get some people just like to save. I enjoy say I’ve been saving since I’ve been in like you, I’ve been in the retirement industry since I was 22 years old, all I’ve thought about for 30 some odd years now is age 65 and saving for retirement.
Maybe 65 isn’t the right age, but all I thought about is saving. So maybe people, they just like to say, they just like to accumulate. I like to watch compounding, David.
Maybe they’re like me. Well, we’re, we’re, we’re trained to watch this, right?
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
So if you think about the way that we, we do, we, we save for retirement, you get these quarterly statements where, you know, you were trained to kind of want that balance to go up. And this idea of, wow, you know, when I retire, I don’t want to go back to And, you know, my balance could go down if bad things happen. It really is a lot of behavioral reasons why I think it’s hard to deaccumulate in retirement.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. I wonder if it dates back to our like caveman neolithic, uh, you know, of being hunter gatherers and, you know, not, you know, squirreling away nuts. Now I’m mixing species, but you know what I mean?
Like it, maybe it’s just part of the human condition, even before there were retirement plans and savings. I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to, we’ll have to find out when the research comes out, David, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for joining us.
Great research. I love when we can talk about pets and don’t forget folks. I’m going to do Bob Barker, have your pets spayed or neutered and go to your SPCA.
David, great to see, as always, we look forward to having you back again very soon.
David Blanchett, Ph.D., CFA®, CFP®, Head of Retirement Research at Prudential Financial and Portfolio Manager at PGIM
Good being here.
