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!
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:
An Update on My Medicare Application
As you know, I applied for Medicare at the beginning of this month. This week, I was going to write on freeing up cash for Required Minimum Distributions for the new year. But we have time on that. This is important. So, here’s an update:
Families are Full of Lies
Families are full of lies, small and large, consequential and insignificant. In my family, we have an insignificant running joke about the cost of anything we purchase:
Q: How much was the dress? Me: $100.
Q: How much was the designer handbag? Me: $100.
Q: How much was the trip to Morocco? Me: $100.
A Closing Window
Over the last few months, I’ve shared important individual concepts about financial and longevity planning:
Why, if you approach aging thanatologically vs. chronologically, you have #MoreRunwayThanYouThink to put your financial plan in order;
Why you are going to live longer than you think and really need to #InvestInYourHealth—especially your metabolic health;
Why you should stop worrying about your children’s paths—they will get where they need to go, and it will look different than the path you traveled;
Why the housing challenge is a multi-generational challenge, and we need to get creative with multi-generational solutions; and
Why your next 50-year financial and longevity plan should include all generations, including your parents. This is not only because #FamilyIsAFixedExpense. It’s also because family will be part of how you allocate your 168 hours a week.
It’s my Turn to Apply for Medicare
Medicare, as you know, is the national health program for seniors created in 1966 by the Lyndon Johnson administration. But did you also know that, in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt’s platform included creating national healthcare insurance? Did you know that Harry Truman tried to put together a national health program in 1945?
The conversation around health care for all Americans is not a new conversation. And I am delighted that I get to receive the benefits of this great program that my and my employers’ 2.9% payroll taxes have funded all these years. That’s right, this isn’t an entitlement. I’ve been paying for this, and now I’m going to collect my benefit. Yay, me! Free Medicare Part A! Whoohoo!
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.
What if They’re NOT Hot Flashes at All?
I’m not sure I even know where to begin with this post. There are so many things to be angry about. And so many areas of frustration. And so many opportunities to be fearful. But I’m not going to start there. I’m going to start with my blessings and some #LoudFinancialPlanning:
How Much Runway Do We Really Have?
Have you heard the expression “thanatological age”? It refers to the average number of years you are expected, actuarially, to live. While insurance people are familiar with the term (although I can never pronounce it) the public at large is not. If you subtract your chronological age from your average life expectancy, what you have is your thanatological age. And 50% of us will live longer than this age.
That’s how averages work.
Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time
I’m having a delightful time reading Dr. Andrew Scott’s new release, The Longevity Imperative. Maybe it’s delightful because he’s saying many of the things I’ve been saying (and living!) as I transit my second half. I mean, who can resist someone who agrees with you? In this book, Scott discusses how we have two ways to view an aging society: as a problem or an opportunity. I strongly favor the latter, because I’m far from being ready to be put out to pasture. #NotYoungNotDone
Financial Literacy:
April is Financial Literacy Month, wherein we encourage Americans to create and maintain healthy financial habits. The only problem is, depending on your source for financial education, you can go down a rabbit hole quickly in the wrong direction.
Not every self-proclaimed financial “expert” delivers best practice information; in other words, generally accepted and researched principles and guidelines. And that means it’s sometimes hard for you to extrapolate what information is right for you. Most of the reputable talking heads deliver solid data, but they also have something to sell. And that can be problematic when what you are learning is sales opinion and not fact.
We Have A False Notion Of Independence
I know I just wrote a little about the notion and costs of frailty risk. But I’m going to force the issue here. My experience with clients is that nobody wants to talk about caregiving and being cared for. (Exception: My mom, Hurricane Jackie, who begins every Saturday morning conversation with, “If anything happens to me….”)
How Can You Say No To Guaranteed(!) Lifetime Income?
There are some crazy and absolutely true metrics about the percentage of clients who, when offered guaranteed lifetime income by their financial advisors, refuse to take the advice. And it’s a high percentage. Since I pride myself on clear communication, I don’t think the challenge, for my own clients, was my failure to describe what it is, what it isn’t, why it’s a good thing, and what are any potential gotchas. I think it’s fear.
The Normal Aging Process And Frailty Risk
It’s hard to imagine arriving at that age where you start a conversation regaling people with your latest doctor’s appointments. Lots of us arrive there, however. Sometimes it’s a necessity, like when a child takes over a parent’s health logistics. But mostly we joke how we’ll never be that person, when in reality, we know, deep down, we are destined to become precisely that person.
Leslie F*cking Jones Wants You To Have Life Insurance
Recently, I drove east from Cincinnati to Saratoga Springs, New York, as I do twice a month; and let me state for the record that I-71 and I-90 are not interesting roads. The trip is much more tolerable when it includes catchup phone calls and audiobooks. This time, my 11-hour pilgrimage called for a weighty tome. A substantial piece of thought leadership.
When You Live Long Enough, Anything Becomes Possible
Those who have met the Finkel family in person know that we are a small bunch. Long used to being undermined by high shelves and overshadowed by tall, long-limbed folk, we are easy to overlook, literally. But we are loud, and that certainly makes up for what we lack in stature. We are also not slender. I believe a more accurate description for us is “chunky.”
Hacking Longevity Bit By Bit
Longevity is the duration or length of our lives. Longevity risk represents how our longevity will compromise our lifestyle. Financial people refer to it as the “risk you will run out of money before you run out of breath.” As a group, we try to prevent ourselves and our loved ones from eating cat food in our 80s. But there is another longevity risk that I want to address, and that is that your healthspan—the duration of that part of your life in which you are free from debilitating illness—won’t be long enough if you don’t take ameliorative steps now.
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.
What Price Ambition?
It was a Sunday, and at about 7:30 a.m., I received a “Got a minute?” text from a protégé, client, and friend. I first met her when she was in her 30s and her kids were little. Now she’s 50, launching young adults, navigating a demanding, well-compensated career, and processing post-divorce trauma. (There’s something “magical”--note the sarcasm--about the two-year mark post-divorce. Maybe I’ll tackle that another day.) This woman—my friend--considers herself a hard-fought success.