Speaking & Partnerships

The missing chapter in your client’s retirement plan.

Your clients are planning income, drawdown strategies, tax optimization, estate documents, and long-term care. None of them are modeling the housing variable — the single largest asset on most balance sheets and the environment that shapes every health outcome that follows.

Dr. Rachael Van Pelt brings 25 years of aging research and an interactive, science-based workshop to professional audiences who serve adults 55+. The content is differentiated, evidence-grounded, and designed to deepen your client relationships — not compete with them.

Download the Speaker One-Pager (PDF) →

The Workshop

Is Your Home Helping or Hurting Your Healthspan?

Why the home is the missing variable in retirement planning.

Most people assume staying put is the safe choice. The data says otherwise. The longer someone waits to evaluate whether their home fits the life they’re heading into, the fewer options they have — and the more expensive the ones that remain.

This interactive workshop helps attendees evaluate whether their current home is supporting or undermining their health, finances, independence, and quality of life. Grounded in 25 years of aging research and delivered in a warm, conversational style, the session introduces the four forces your home acts on — Body, Brain, Bank, and Base (your home and where it sits) — as a practical framework for understanding how your living environment shapes your healthspan, cognitive engagement, financial security, and connection to community.

Attendees complete a guided self-assessment during the session. They don’t sit through a lecture. They leave with a personalized snapshot of where their home is working and where it isn’t.

Workshop details

Format	40 minutes + 15 minutes Q&A
Audience	Adults 55+ evaluating whether their home fits their next chapter
AV needs	Screen/projector preferred; can be delivered without slides
Cost	Complimentary. Speaker provides all handouts and materials.
Style	Interactive and conversational. Science-based, not salesy.

What Your Clients Will Walk Away With

Not a pitch. A framework they’ll use.

The workshop is designed so attendees leave with something concrete — not just inspiration, but a tool they can apply to their own situation that week.

A completed Body · Brain · Bank · Base self-assessment

Personalized scores across all four forces. The first structured look most attendees have ever taken at whether their home matches their life — across health, cognition, finances, and community.

The Go-Strong window — and why timing matters

The science behind the 55–67 window when health is still improvable, wealth is often peaking, and the capacity to manage a major transition is at its highest. This reframe changes how attendees think about urgency.

Local housing market context

Carrying costs, equity implications, and market realities relevant to their situation — not generic national statistics.

Clarity on their next step

Whether that’s staying, modifying, or moving — attendees leave knowing the right question to ask next, not pressured into an answer.

Access to the Rightsizing Decision Coach

A free online assessment for deeper exploration after the workshop. This is the bridge between the event and ongoing engagement — for both the attendee and the hosting partner.

An invitation to a complimentary Rightsize Home & Health Review

A 30-minute call for attendees who want personalized guidance. No obligation to the hosting partner or to Dr. Van Pelt.

Why Partners Book This Workshop

You bring the client list. I bring the content your competitors can’t offer.

Every financial planner in your market can host a Social Security timing seminar. Every estate attorney can run a trust-and-will workshop. This content is different because no one else in the advisory space is connecting housing decisions to healthspan outcomes with peer-reviewed research behind it.

What you get:

A differentiated client event that deepens relationships rather than pitching products.

Scientific credibility — 58 peer-reviewed papers, 20+ years of NIH-funded research, and a framework your clients haven’t encountered anywhere else.

Post-event engagement — every attendee who completes the Rightsizing Decision Coach enters a nurture sequence, and warm leads are shared with the hosting partner.

Content that makes your practice the one clients talk about afterward.

What this is not:

A real estate pitch disguised as education. Dr. Van Pelt’s real estate practice is separate from the workshop content and never surfaces during the session.

A generic retirement seminar. Every data point is specific to the housing-health intersection. A competitor could not deliver this content.

A one-and-done event. The workshop is designed to open conversations your clients weren’t having — the kind that lead to deeper planning work with you.

Who This Is Built For

Professional partners who already serve the Go-Strong audience.

The adults most likely to benefit from this workshop — women 55–67 who are starting to question whether their home fits the life they’re heading into — are already in your practice. They’re the clients running retirement income projections, updating estate documents, managing age-related health changes, or reviewing long-term care options. The housing question is in the room. No one is naming it.

Fee-Only Financial Planners

Your clients are modeling income, drawdown, and tax strategy but housing is the largest asset on most balance sheets and the variable no one is running. This workshop gives them a framework to evaluate whether their home is working for their retirement plan or quietly working against it.

Estate Planning & Elder Law Attorneys

Your clients are making decisions about legacy and long-term care, often without a clear picture of where they’ll actually live as they age. This workshop helps them ask (and begin to answer) that question before a health event forces it.

CPAs & Retirement Tax Specialists

Your clients are running the numbers on equity, selling costs, and retirement income but rarely on the full financial impact of staying in a home that no longer fits. This workshop brings the housing variable into a conversation they’re already having with you.

Functional Medicine & Integrative Health Practitioners

Your patients are doing the clinical work (managing metabolic, musculoskeletal, and cognitive health) but the home environment shapes whether those interventions hold. This workshop connects the care you’re providing to the living environment where it either succeeds or stalls.

Long-Term Care Insurance Agents

Your clients are planning for a future they hope won’t happen, but often haven’t evaluated whether their current home could support them if it does. This workshop reframes that question from reactive to proactive while their options are still widest.

Libraries, Recreation Centers & Senior Centers

Your community programming serves adults who are actively navigating the transition into the next chapter of their lives and wondering whether their home is ready for it. This workshop gives your patrons a science-based framework for a question most of them are already carrying.

About the Speaker

Dr. Rachael Van Pelt, PhD

Dr. Rachael Van Pelt spent 25 years as a scientist studying how people age, including 20+ years leading federally funded clinical trials at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She published 58 peer-reviewed papers, secured more than $20 million in NIH funding, and sat at the center of two of the most contested questions in women’s health: what estrogen actually does after menopause, and why where fat is stored matters more than how much of it there is.

One pattern kept surfacing: people in their late 50s and 60s (the Go-Strong decade) have a critical window when health is still improvable and wealth is often peaking. Housing decisions made during this window carry outsized consequences for Body, Brain, Bank, and Base (your home and where it sits). Yet most retirement planning ignores the home as a health variable entirely.

She left a landmark NIH study because the bottleneck was never the science; it was translation. Today she combines that research with an active Colorado real estate license to help adults 55+ make evidence-based decisions about their living environment before the Go-Strong window closes.

She hosts Next Act Ninjas: Mastering Lifestyle Longevity, a podcast with 100+ episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

PhD, Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado · Healthspan Scientist · Licensed Health Coach · Licensed Colorado Realtor, eXp Realty

Read the full biography →

Book This Workshop

Book this workshop for your clients.

Whether you’re a financial planner looking for a differentiated client event, a community venue seeking evidence-based programming, or a healthcare professional exploring a co-hosted series — the next step is the same conversation.

Book a Partner Conversation →

Or email directly: rachael@rightsizeretirement.com

Download the Speaker One-Pager (PDF) →