Tag Archives: Baby Boomers

It Ain’t Gettin’ Any Easier!

Pretty much every day, I am alarmed by little stories I find by scanning information about Elder issues.

My new friend Joanne Giardini-Russell, a true Medicare Guru, wrote an article this week about one of her clients who continued to go to work up to age 71. That, in itself, wasn’t a big surprise to me. If 60 is the new 40, working to age 70 or older,  is bound to happen more and more. Many of us actually like working.  Sure, many must keep working, and that is another article, for sure. But many people do work well into their 70’s and even 80’s. And those same hard-working people are often horrified about seemingly innocuous decisions they made (or didn’t make, by omission) and how they have placed themselves or their spouse into true fear of imminent destitution. Because of runaway health care costs.

You see, this guy’s venial sin was working too long and not retiring…..his mortal sin was not getting good information about how this affected his health insurance….more specifically Medicare. Suffice it to say that Joanne is trying to help this couple who have blown through more than $30,000…YES, THAT IS THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS…. of their own money, even though he had group insurance at work.

I don’t know this unfortunate couple’s story. But my guess is, they were not educated at work, they did not know how to use Medicare to their advantage at age 65, they did not take advantage of all the options at work for short-term disability and long-term disability, even if it required a contribution, and so on.

Those of us in this field are trying hard to get everyone to see the advantage of advanced planning instead of crisis planning. We are trying to work with your Financial Advisors,  your HR people at work, and quite frankly, anyone else who will listen, including you.

Find us. Ask us to come to your work and speak. Ask us questions on the internet machine!

Buy our books, yeah I said it. But let me ask you a question, if anyone could have saved thirty dollars, three thousand dollars, or thirty thousand dollars, by buying a book for fifteen dollars, would that be worth it? Yes, my friends, I think it would. #WhoMovedMyTeeth?

 

There is tons of good information out there. But you must find the experts, read things, ask questions and take action. Now is the time if you are a Baby Boomer, now is the time if your parents are in their 50’s and 60’s.

Oh, and to you Millennials and Gen-Xers….it’s never too late!

 

“You Just Have to…… Get Your Sh%$#@# Together…..and then you can Laugh all the way to the bank!”

Joanne doesn’t even know I’m telling you about her….so she will see this when you do.  If If you have any inkling that you want to discuss what you should do about signing up for Medicare:

Check out my friend Joanne at :

Boomer Health Group

Joanne Giardini-Russell, Medicare Guru

http://www.boomerhealthgroup.com/

 

 

The best things happen while you’re dancing…..and then……..

Recovery from a crazy weekend symbolized too much drinking, eating, carousing and not enough sleep. Good times. Recovery in the baby boom lexicon foreshadows peculiar changes.

Last weekend my husband and I went to two dinner dances. We love to dance. In fact, we took three different ballroom dancing classes this year.  Since ballroom dancing is one of the top five things you can do to stave off dementia, we figured a thrown hip or knee was a better choice than Alzheimer’s. You wouldn’t recognize ballroom dancing if you watched us, but we just love to dance and that was a legit way to get off the couch, do something fun together, and laugh at our mutual lack of skill.  Then we go back to our lounge lizard moves.

Now at our age, two late nights of dancing, in a row, is pretty risque. The problem is not the actual dancing. It’s the recovery. Saturday night’s gala lasted until midnight. Traditionally, at this affair, we are the last couple on the dance floor with our best friends. This is a country club affair, and if my husband is the recipient of an award  (which is often, because I married a winner in every sense of the word) then we dance more, he drinks more, we talk more and we recover more slowly.

Yes, he won.

Recovery now means we were up too late (past midnight!), too much physical activity

What dancing really looks like
What dancing really looks like

(dancing?) plenty of sleep (because we pass out in our bed as soon as we fall into it) and at least one person who was the designated driver and is only recovering from too much water. And yet, the morning after….the bones creak, the legs move slowly, napping is scheduled as a high priority the minute one wakes up, and the thought of grooming to a high level all over again is daunting.

The next day we both tried to lay low knowing full well our other set of best friends would expect dancing mania, especially since they just completed a course of ballroom dancing with us. We did not disappoint. Although, with 30 minutes of rock and roll left, I could see my intrepid husband slowing down.

“My legs are giving out,” he whispered, as he twirled me in towards him.

“My feet are killing me,” I said quietly, as I did the cha-cha around him.

Now I know what Ginger Rogers meant when she said something like: You try doing this in high heels and backwards….and Fred gets all the credit.

As we limped to the car, the second night in a row, I said to my dancing partner and life partner, “I don’t think we can do this again.”

He mumbled something back which was either, “sure we can, we love to dance,” or “I think we can refinance.”

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table the next morning, I hear my husband coming down the stairs mumbling, “Ow, Ow, Ow.”

I would have gone to the bottom of the staircase to help him, but I had just crawled over to the coffee pot and wasn’t about to do that again.

“You just have to Laugh…”

©Cathy Sikorski 2014