Final Post of the Year #Peak65 Edition: In Praise of Attrition
I can’t begin to tell you how delighted I am that we’ve done a full year of weekly posts for Madrina Molly™! Have you laughed? Have you learned? I know I have. Welcome to our final post of the year before we take a holiday hiatus, and I celebrate my early January #Peak65 birthday with the Hubs, Col. Mustard. We’re headed to Quebec City and Montreal for a fancy, foodie few days. It’s his birthday celebration too. Just not #Peak65. He has to wait his turn.
Hurricane Jackie (Mom) and I have a running joke that, “If you live long enough, anything becomes possible.” If you ask her, she was not a thin, athletic, or a particularly pretty younger woman. Sure enough, as she has aged and I have aged along with her, we find that things once completely alien to us are reflected by the regard of those around us. For having outlasted her peers, she’s thin, athletic (mobile and independent), smart, and pretty!
Progress Report: My Wish/Want/Will Exercise for 2024
I hope this finds you well-immersed in the joys of the holiday season. This year has been an especially propitious one for me. I am fond of saying that things are not new often nor do they stay new for long, so we should celebrate! And 2024 was certainly a year of things being new—from my New York-to-Ohio commute to the launch of Madrina Molly™.
In a few weeks, we can all start our Wish/Want/Will exercise for 2025—articulating what we wish for, what we are willing to work for, and what we are willing to sacrifice in pursuit of … well, whatever it is that we choose to pursue. And that requires, for me, a review of my list for 2024 and an assessment of my progress.
Aging without being Ageist in the Gym
During my last stay at my home in Saratoga Springs, early darkness curtailed my ability to walk for hours at a time in the nearby state park. The Hubs was on a job in another state, leaving me without a spotter at the gym. And I was feeling a little lonely and sorry for myself. Usually, I’m pretty good about going to the gym solo and doing a free-weight workout followed by walking it out on a treadmill. (Hooray for audiobooks!) Or I can stay home and do snatches with my trusty kettlebells. But on this particular day, I felt out of sorts and decided I needed a new “thing.”
Scouring the local YMCA schedule, nothing appealed to me. I can do fast-paced, high-intensity aerobics and weight classes, but there’s always a risk that I could hurt something. That’s a real concession to aging: We don’t know how well we will recover or how long the recovery from an injury will take. Besides, I like workouts that are intentional rather than fast.
Discovering Gifts in Loss
I needed to write this now because the end of the year is a critical deadline for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). What’s more, there have been so many changes to the tax code over the past five years that there isn’t a financial planner who can keep things straight without a cheat sheet. To top it off, there’s a best practice you should know about, especially if you manage your own IRA/401(k)/403(b) investment accounts.
Apologies to those who would prefer a story. This week I only have cold, hard, financial facts. Let’s start with the basics:
Welcome to the Madrina Molly™ Community
I’m delighted to report that we had a successful launch last week. Our mission to democratize and demystify financial information for Women of a Certain Age(ncy) and their Allies and Friends has begun!
Only 16% of BoomX Women Say They Have Received Financial Education
That’s not acceptable. For years, women have been reaching out to me for financial advice and planning assistance. By and large you are:
Stressed and ashamed that you somehow missed the memo on how to manage money.
Ready to make yourselves wrong when you seek advice. (Seriously, the women I meet are quick to begin the conversation with, “I’m sure you’re going to tell me my financial management is terrible.”)
Scared that you won’t be able to continue working long enough to fund your retirement.
Worried that you’ll need to work forever to fund your retirement.
Ping-ponging from children to work to parents without time for yourself.
Angry that media, marketers, and institutions think you’re invisible.
A Madrina Molly™ subscription gives you a place to go to ask your questions, confirm you are on the right track, solve problems, and achieve a lovely "second half" of life. All of this comes with the confidence of knowing that I’m not a finfluencer; I’m a former working financial planner and a current (and forever) CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Professional.
24 x 7 = 168
You have 168 hours in a week. So do I. So does everyone on the planet. That’s no mystery. It’s simple math. And how we spend those 168 hours is up to us.
You may already be rolling your eyes thinking I’m dead wrong, that our time isn’t really ours, not all of it anyway. Some of it belongs to jobs, bosses or employees, some to our kids, our spouses or aging parents.
Each week, we devote hours to running errands, doing chores, and trying to carve out some time for ourselves, to preserve our health, our happiness or maybe our sanity. Then there’s time for sleep … often, there just aren’t enough hours left for that, or at least that’s what it seems.
“Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption
The Money Tree
Pull up an easy chair, and sit yourself down and lean back while I tell you ‘bout the folks who live in the town of Greenback….
So goes the old song, The Money Tree, which I learned as a young girl. Sometimes I find myself humming it to this day.
There are actually many plants that are called money plants and money trees. When I pulled the plug on my marriage in 2010 and moved into a lovely apartment overlooking the ocean to heal, I purchased a tiny money plant, a jade (Crassula Ovata) and sat it on the windowsill. Now, 14 years later, it continues to grow and branch, and I offer my cuttings to family and friends so they can enjoy luck and prosperity too.
The path hasn’t always been perfect; especially the immediate two years post-separation. My unpartnered friends and clients know this from their own experiences. Somehow, that’s how long it takes all of us to feel like ourselves again.
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together
Behind the scenes at Madrina Molly™, we’ve been working our little tails off to create a digital home for Financial and Longevity Planning Education. In fairness, my explorations on the Internet have yielded a few good teachers out there in social media land. But it’s hard to find them.
Currently, the “finfluencers” want to teach you how to trade options, buy tax liens, and purchase their “secret sauce” training.
Newsflash: If you haven’t spent any time learning how to trade up until now, what makes you think you’d be interested in it moving forward? Plus, you don’t have to “trade” to invest successfully.
On Anti-Anti-Aging
What if we celebrated our friends and daughters’ first grey hairs with the same enthusiasm and chutzpah with which we celebrate their first steps, first job, or first drink? Whatever we need to feel beautiful, we should do. There’s no shame in that.
I’m not against self-care, but …
… our wrinkles mean we smiled.
… our mom-bellies mean we loved.
… our sunspots mean we enjoyed the outdoors.
… our muffin tops mean like good food.
… our grey hairs mean we made it.
These days, we can’t escape those pushing all sorts of anti-aging products at us: serums for youthful skin, injections for plump lips, dyes for grey hairs, push-up bras for sagging breasts, and modern-day corsets to fit in that dress we used to wear.
Romancing the Home
I started writing a serious post, but it just wasn’t happening. I took a break to find something amusing on TV and settled on Zombie House Flippers. I have thoughts.
For starters, their math doesn’t “math” for me, and I’ll explain that in a minute. But it made me think about how our DIY economy has grown beyond all measure, courtesy of these types of programs, customer workshops at Home Depot/Lowe’s, and social media. I applaud the industriousness, talent, and personal ambition of these creators.
But ….
The Kids are Alright
Recently, I went a couple of rounds (respectfully) with some readers on Facebook about my statement that I don’t think it’s productive for parents to tell their children that buying real estate is the “correct” path to wealth. I get that the real estate market sucks right now in lack of inventory, inflated prices, and that mortgage interest rates have adjusted upward. (My first mortgage was 11.85%. Either you can afford a mortgage, or you can’t. Rock bottom interest rates were never guaranteed. A decade of people got lucky, and that’s no longer the case. Get over it.)
The Feminization of Wealth
We’re going to hear more and more about the “feminization of wealth” as the great wealth transfer—$80 to $90 trillion from Boomers to Millennials—takes place. By the end of the decade, we expect that women will control $30 trillion, and, eventually, about 60% of all wealth in the U.S. For perspective, U.S. gross domestic product for 2023 was just under $28 trillion.
The Role Of Allies (Part II)
I few weeks ago, I posted What is the Role of Allies? (Part I), wherein I proposed that Allies who are only mentors are coming up short. Continued economic expansion requires that Allies actively identify and recruit more women into senior leadership because, in a world that is increasingly older and female, women’s wisdom and identification with the consumer population is essential for growth.
What Is The Role Of Allies? (Part I)
It seems to me that we (still) live in a world where misogyny is the last acceptable bias. It’s crazy to me, growing up being told I could do anything I wanted to, if I wanted it badly enough, to know that my success is a threat to anyone.
Childless By Choice
I am childless by choice. And that’s probably an important area for Madrina Molly™ to explore, as women without children need to consider how they will spend their later years. For a couple of decades, people told me I’d change my mind one day; that my biological clock would start ticking. It never happened.
I'm So Excited!
Recently, a pundit referred to the “generativity” of President Biden. That immediately sent me to the nearest search engine. Turns out “Generativity vs. Stagnation” is the seventh stage of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory. (I did not take Psychology in college, so this is all new to me. But say “psychosocial development theory” three times fast and Erikson may appear.)
We Didn't Expect To Be Tested This Soon
Many of you have been kind enough to ask how you can provide financial support to Madrina Molly™ as this effort launches, and we are grateful. For now, the best gift you can give is to subscribe (for free) to the newsletter on this platform, Substack. We have made the decision that we will build our mailing list and use Substack’s free features, of which there are many. But when it comes time to monetize our offerings, we will migrate elsewhere.
My Favorite New Year Coaching Exercise
I got excited when I realized I’d be able to share my favorite coaching exercise with a large audience this year. I don’t claim originality for this exercise; I just know it works. It’s an amalgamation of multiple list-making exercises I’ve borrowed from people like Barbara Sher and Jack Canfield.
Here's To Our Holiday Rituals
Merry Christmakwanzukkah! That is to say, I wish you a wonderful day of cultural rituals. And it is my sincere hope that if you have no Christmas rituals yet, you use this day to go ahead and make some.
The Priceless Value of Experiences
I recently did a podcast with a local mental health service on how to survive money stress during the holidays. We forget that gifts of time, experience, and expertise are as valuable -- or more valuable -- than store-bought purchases. So, the show’s host and I instead discussed ways to avoid overspending, including some tips for planning.