CHAMPION JET CAR RACER LIVES BOLDLY BUT

Is an Official Personal Finance Partner of Growing Bolder

Champion Jet Car Racer Lives Boldly but Won’t Take Risks with Retirement

I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. Having an annuity tells me my retirement is protected.

– ELAINE LARSEN

When Elaine Larsen started out in jet car racing, it was all about the adrenaline rush. At speeds of over 280 mph, Larsen has made a career out of going as fast as possible for five seconds down a straight and narrow quarter-mile track. So, to say she lives life at full-throttle is an understatement if there ever was one.

“Going fast is where I find my freedom. 5Gs? That’s just a Saturday,” she says. “Three hundred miles per hour? That’s where I feel normal.”

Larsen, a two-time International Hot Rod Association World Champion, refused to take the same risks with her retirement plan, though. She locked down and added protected income from an annuity to her retirement plan, ensuring that she and her husband Chris, the co-owner of Larsen Motorsports, won’t face any surprises when she leaves the sport.

Over her career, Larsen has had a handful of close calls, from parachutes not deploying to her car spinning sideways at 280 mph. But one incident in particular slowed down everything long enough for her to gain an entirely different perspective.

When a severe crash in 2011 left her with a shattered kneecap, broken ankle, cracked ribs and subdural hematoma, Larsen started to think about life after racing. Her husband was actually the person who extinguished the flames that engulfed her car.

“My focus changed from being the badass race car driver to thinking: What can I do to help inspire young girls to be as confident as me?” Larsen says.

The Larsens became major supporters of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculums in schools, recognizing that the future of the sport depends on the next generation of young racers. However, she has a special place in her heart for young women looking to get into the rough-and-tumble world of drag racing.

“I’m always out there scouting for the next Elaine Larsen,” she says. “I try not to scare them, but I try to educate them. I try to arm them with every single thing they could possibly need to succeed in what they’re doing, including their money and finances.”

But the crash also made her think seriously about retirement. According to Larsen, she approaches her retirement the same way she approaches a drag race. “We have to think about every little thing that can go wrong. I take that same planning just as serious in my retirement,” she explains. “And I used that same planning when I chose to purchase this annuity.”

Her annuity provides protected lifetime income so she’s not only able to help maintain her current lifestyle when she retires, but she’s also able to experience new things. “I don’t think it’s going to be a sad day when I get out of the driver’s seat because I’m going to put a different hat on. I’m going to take my helmet off, and I’m going to replace it with a business suit.”

Larsen is the first to admit that when she’s behind the wheel of a jet car she’s never in complete control. However, she does have some reassurance knowing that her annuity can protect her income so she doesn’t have to worry about running out of money in retirement.

“I want to take control of my destiny,” Larsen says. “I want to be the one who said, ‘I put money in there. I invested in this…I made the right decision, and now look how I’m living.’”

Meditation forSkeptics

Jackie Carlin

You know the old nightmare about showing up in class wearing nothing but your underwear? Now imagine that humiliation is real. And it’s not just in front of a class, but the entire nation. Dan Harris was wearing clothes when he experienced his nightmare-come-true moment. Yet, he never felt more naked.

On the morning of June 7, 2004, Harris was in position at the news desk during a live broadcast of Good Morning America when his ABC News colleagues Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson tossed it over to him for the morning’s headlines.

“The science is real. Just as we take care of our bodies because we want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible, we need to start taking care of our minds and our brains.”

Within moments, things started to unravel. In the middle of reading a story, Harris started to stammer, his eyes welled up and it was clear to viewers that something was terribly wrong.

Harris quickly dumped out of the story to save himself from further humiliation when he realized what was happening—he was having a full-blown panic attack in front of 5 million viewers.

That moment was years in the making.

Harris joined ABC News when he was just 28 years old. He admits that he felt insecure working closely with news legends such as Sawyer and the late Peter Jennings.

To cope, he became a workaholic, signing up for any and every assignment. After the horrific events of September 11, 2001, he volunteered to head overseas to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I volunteered to go to the war zone without ever really thinking about the psychological consequences,” Harris says. “When I got home after a particularly long stretch, I got depressed. I wasn’t even self-aware enough to know that I was depressed—I just wasn’t feeling good.”

Before he was diagnosed with depression, Harris selfmedicated with cocaine and ecstasy. “Even though I was only doing it for a brief period and never when I was on the air or when I was working, it blew up in my face with that panic attack,” he says.

Harris later learned the drugs he was ingesting can raise the level of adrenaline in the brain, leading to the potential for panic attacks. “When I realized what a moron I’d been, I knew I needed to make some changes,” he adds.

He sought professional treatment to kick his drug habits, and a higher power intervened to set him on a new course of self-discovery—his boss, Peter Jennings, who assigned him to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News.

Harris’s new beat began at the same time he was coming to terms with his personal behavior. “The confluence of those events pushed me in a different direction,” he says.

Meditation was something that had never even crossed Harris’s mind, except as something to scoff at.

“I’d had always assumed that meditation was only for weirdos,” Harris says. “That it was that for people who lived in yurt, collected crystals and were really into Cat Stevens. It wasn’t something that I had any interest in doing.”

Then he learned about the science underpinning meditation, which demonstrates that the practice can lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system and literally rewire keys parts of your brain related to well-being and stress.

“That really got me intrigued,” Harris says.

So, he began to mediate. And he admits that it was— and sometimes still is—a struggle to quiet his mind.

“Meditation is an exercise for your brain,” he says. “You’re trying to focus on one thing at a time, which is a radical act in the age of information overload. And in this case, you’re usually focusing on your breath—on the feeling of breath coming and going out.”

Harris describes meditation as “a bicep curl for your brain, because you’re breaking a lifetime of habit of walking around in this daydream about the future and the past instead of focusing on what’s happening right now.”

Ever the consummate journalist, Harris found himself diving deep into the world of meditation. He released his first book on the subject in 2014, 10 Percent Happier: How I Tamed My Inner Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story. The book with the long title and powerful message quickly launched a mini-movement.

Harris followed that up with a podcast series and meditation app dedicated to helping other skeptics tame their minds. He also wrote a follow-up book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.

Harris says once he got over his preconceived notions about meditation, he realized how useful it can be. He points out that a generation ago, people would have thought it was crazy to run for exercise or even for fun—but now, running is ubiquitous. He believes the same health revolution is underway with meditation and mindfulness.

“It’ll help to have more ‘normal’ people or those who aren’t wearing robes, long dangling earrings and shawls out there talking about it,” he quips. “The science is real. Just as we take care of our bodies because we want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible, we need to start taking care of our minds and our brains.”

Harris admits that as humans, it’s only natural for us to create stress around whatever we’re focused on—whether it’s our jobs, our families or even our volunteer work.

But by learning to tame our critical, chaotic inner voices, we just may find ourselves a smidge happier. And isn’t that an idea worth meditating on?