Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a Smart Money Magazine highlighting two themes related to Later Living. Continue reading
Marking the Entrance to Retirement
Retirement is a major life event that deserves to be marked and noticed. It compares to initiations into adulthood or marriage, both of which are actively celebrated. At work, we honor careers that are ending, but retirement should be inaugurated with its own special activity.
Whatever the chosen activities, a good retirement initiation involves reflecting backward to interpret what has gone before, looking inward to better understand yourself, and preparing for what might be ahead. Continue reading
Adding Facebook—a Virtual Social Life—to Your Mix
Computer photo by Wilton Rodregues
Do you have a virtual social life as well as a real one? Facebook, a social networking site dominated by young people, is also becoming popular with retirees. That trend will likely intensify in upcoming years as Boomers, most of whom are already online, move into retirement. A fundamental reason underpins Facebook’s likely growth among older people: friends can be hard to make in later life, and at its core, Facebook is about friends.
Uh-oh
This morning I was at my desk working on a blog post when I noticed music playing nearby. It was a little too loud, and it seemed to be coming from another room. I got up, walked to the doorway and hollered for Barbara, “That music you’re playing—where is it coming from?”
“I’m not playing music,” she answered from the back of the house.
So I looked around nearby rooms, found nothing, then returned to my desk only to discover the music coming from my computer. Uh-oh, I thought.
A Critical Difference: Investments in Middle versus Later Life
Retirement is a watershed event in many ways, not least of which because investments take on a fundamentally different role in a person’s life. The role change is important, yet it often goes unnoticed as new retirees involve themselves in deciding where to live or what trips they might like.
Nothing signifies the change better than the activity with investment accounts: during middle life, workers regularly add to their investments, and during later life, they withdraw. A good way to illustrate the importance of the change is to compare the performance of investment portfolios during 11 years of work versus 11 years of retirement.
How Far Can You Imagine?
In the March 5, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten reports on “Magic Mountain: What happens at Davos?” (I’m not sure if a paywall prevents public readership.) Davos refers to the five-day, invitation only, annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, (WEF) which its web site says includes, “a cast of the world’s intellectual, business, arts, cultural and social giants.”
How to Discover Freedom
The beginning of retirement, like the first day of kindergarten, is often abrupt.
Some years ago, my mother reminded me of waiting with her for the school bus on my first day. I clutched my lunchbox in a small fist as the huge yellow bus rolled to a stop at our driveway. The doors clattered open; I approached the steps, grabbed the handrail, turned and said, “Bye Mom,” then climbed aboard.
Retirement starts that way for many when they say goodbye on that last day and walk out the door. That is how I retired, and I now realize it helped me know a special kind of freedom.
How to Make the 6-Step Investment Model Work Better
Two weeks ago we wrote about a 6-step investment model for retirees, and two days ago we saw that the model worked. Now we can show how to make it work better. The key is to further diversify the stock investments. Originally we used a mutual fund that reflects returns to 500 leading U.S. companies, and today we use one that reflects returns to the entire U.S. stock market.
The 6-Step Investment Model Worked
Two weeks ago I recommended a 6-step model for managing investments through retirement. Today we test the model with data from the last 11 years, one of the most challenging periods for investors in modern history.
What To Do When a Friend is Dying
When growing older, we encounter illness and death more frequently. We may suffer illness ourselves, but we also witness illness and death among friends. In each case we might think of ourselves as called to a ministry, and the relevant issue is how best to serve. Continue reading