Two years ago, when Anne Chow was CEO of AT&T Business, she decided she was done with her career at the company where she had spent 32 years. But the move didn’t feel like a retirement, she says, since she planned to remain active in the business world. Instead, she calls it a “rewirement”: a new career phase that comes after climbing the corporate ladder and embraces more purpose-driven work.

This week: her advice for leaders contemplating a similar move. (And because Chow’s first tip is to plan ahead, it’s worth reading even for those earlier in their careers.) Plus, how is the rise of online sports gambling shaking up household finances?

Think “rewirement”

Transitioning from a high-powered career to something like board service, teaching, or philanthropy is a significant change, both financially and in terms of personal identity. And this transition looks different for each person.

“No one is going to tell you, ‘This is the playbook. Here’s your answer,’” Chow says, “because what you want and what somebody else wants in their rewirement is going to be fundamentally different.”

Chow now serves on the boards of three public corporations, is a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the Kellogg School, and is the author of the recent national best-selling book, Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion. She also is the sole proprietor of her own business, The Rewired CEO. Chow recently sat down with Kellogg Insight to offer her insights into rewirement planning.

One tip? Start thinking about your goals for rewirement long before you’re ready to take the plunge. “That’s the mistake I see most often,” says Chow. “People are not actively thinking about this in an operational way while they’re still in their current role.”

But it’s critical that they do, she says, because the rewirement opportunities that you want are unlikely to just fall in your lap. Corporate board seats are competitive, for example, and universities are unlikely to take a chance on hiring someone who has never successfully stood at the front of a lecture hall.

A lack of planning can also mean that rather than branching out, some people default to staying within their old industries. This can be a particularly difficult situation for executives who were used to being among the most powerful players in the room.

“I’ve seen people who get swirled up in the ecosystem they had left, becoming a consultant or even working for a supplier,” she says “Personally, I don’t think that’s mentally healthy. To me, if you’re going to rewire, you should use the opportunity to reset yourself, not hang on to the glory days of the past.”

Read more of Chow’s advice in Kellogg Insight.

More bets, less savings

Online sports gambling is now legal in much of the United States. And I totally get the appeal: much like participating in a fantasy league, having a few bucks on a game often makes it more fun to watch.

But for a lot of people, “a few bucks” isn’t going to cut it. In fact, American households that participate in sports gambling spend on average $1,100 annually on online bets. This statistic comes from a new study by Kellogg’s Scott Baker and several colleagues at University of Kansas and Bringham Young.

The researchers studied the state-by-state rollout of online sports gambling and its impact on household spending from 2018 to 2023. And they found that, by and large, the hundreds of billions of dollars that consumers pour into online sports betting overwhelmingly come from money that used to be spent on more stable, long-term investments, like retirement accounts. (Specifically, for every $1 a household spent on betting, the household put $2 fewer into investment accounts.)

“In general, as entertainment and gambling spending goes up, bad things happen for people’s budgets in other places,” Baker says. “Net savings decline, and we see more indicators of financial fragility.”

Overall, the researchers find, these changes to people’s spending patterns were particularly acute among households that were least able to afford it.

You can read more about this study in Kellogg Insight.