Mattering…in Retirement – Jennifer Breheny Wallace

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Retirement planning focuses heavily on finances — investments, Social Security, and risks.

But there’s another question that often sneaks up on people once the career chapter closes:

Do I still matter?

Our guest today has spent years researching one of the most powerful psychological needs we have as human beings — the need to feel valued and to add value.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the new book Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. Her work explores how feeling significant, appreciated, invested in, and depended on shapes our well-being throughout life.

And her insights have important implications for retirement. Because when work ends, many people lose one of the primary places where they knew they mattered — where their contributions were visible, valued, and relied upon.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why the need to matter doesn’t diminish with age • How retirees can build what Jennifer calls a “mattering portfolio” • The surprising research on relationships and resilience • Practical daily actions that restore a sense of meaning and contribution

If you’re thinking about retirement — or already there — this conversation may change how you think about purpose, connection, and belonging in the next chapter.

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Bio

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is the author of Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. She is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose work explores the power of mattering in our everyday lives. Through research and storytelling, Wallace examines the hidden forces shaping modern life, from the crisis of meaning in achievement culture to the essential role of mattering in personal, workplace, and societal health. Her first book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — And What We Can Do About It, was a New York Times Bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, and a Next Big Idea selection.

Wallace is the founder of The Mattering Institute, whose mission is to create cultures of mattering in workplaces and communities, and co-founder of The Mattering Movement, a nonprofit whose mission is to create cultures of mattering in K-12 schools. Wallace has partnered with The LEGO Group on its global Play Unstoppable campaign to address perfectionism and grow confidence through play. She has also consulted with Calm wellness app, Netflix, and is a BCG BrightHouse Luminary.

She serves on the University of Michigan’s Well-being Collective Advisory Council, and the Advisory Board for Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Wallace is a Journalism Fellow at The Center for Parent and Teen Communication at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

After graduating from Harvard College, Wallace was a journalist for CBS “60 Minutes” and was part of the team that won The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. She is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and frequently appears on national television programs to discuss her work. Wallace serves on the board of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City, where she lives with her husband and their three children.

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For More on Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Website

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Mentioned in This Retirement Podcast

The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering – The Wall Street Journal

Video: Taylor Mali (What Do You Make?)

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Your choices shaped your career.

But when retirement approaches, a new design challenge appears.

Not a financial one. A life design challenge.

What will your days look like? What will energize you? What might the next five yea