After the Rush Podcast

The financial side of leaving full-time work gets endless coverage. The part almost no one covers is the strangest part of all: once you have saved carefully for decades, you have to learn to spend. In Episode 4 of After the Rush, Catherine McDowell sits with the shift from a building life to a drawing one. Why spending money you have plenty of suddenly feels heavier than it should. Why the math n...

You have probably done the math. Maybe you have a financial advisor, a retirement account, a plan. And yet, something still feels unresolved. In Episode 3 of After the Rush, Catherine McDowell goes underneath the numbers to the story most people never examine -- the one that was written for them before they were old enough to have an opinion about it. What you believed about money at ten years old...

Most people approaching the end of full-time work are ready for the financial transition. Almost none of them are ready for the identity one. In Episode 4 of After the Rush, Catherine McDowell talks about what actually happens when the professional title goes away -- the grief that nobody names, the questions that surface in the quiet, and why rushing to answer them is usually a mistake. This is n...

This is the first episode of After the Rush . I have been telling people for years that the transition is the work. Not the thing you get through to reach the real chapter. The transition itself. That is where the real work happens. In this episode I introduce myself, the show, and the conversation I have been wanting to have for a long time. Where I came from, what I know, and why I think this ch...