Longevity & Aging

No doubt about it: at some point we’re neither semi-retired, findependent or fully retired. We’re out there in a retirement community or retirement home, and maybe for a few years near the end of this incarnation, some time to reflect on it all in a nursing home. Our Longevity & Aging category features our own unique blog posts, as well as blog feeds from Mark Venning’s ChangeRangers.com and other experts.

Third Age education: Later-life learning

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Mature students are very focused on their classes
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By Aaron Hector, Doherty & Bryant Financial Strategists

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Have you ever wanted to do or learn something, but never seemed to have the time? With commitments to family, friends, your career and hobbies, it’s easy to see how life can get away from you.

The term ‘Third Age’ refers to the stage in life after which you have retired and your children are independent. This is the stage at which you become liberated and finally have extra time.

It’s back-to-school season for our youth this fall – but why not for you too? Let’s look at some options for lifelong learning opportunities available during your third age.

First, it doesn’t have to be expensive! There are a number of low-cost to no-cost education options available. Seniors are offered discounts on many different products and services; including reduced bank fees, transit passes, discounted meals and even tax breaks. Perhaps the single greatest of all such discounts is the offer of free tuition – which has been extended by many universities here in Canada. If you consider that one year’s tuition can cost over $10,000, then a four-year degree could equal $40,000 in savings. Of course, you don’t need to commit to a four-year degree; you could get plenty of enjoyment from taking a single personal interest course.

Seniors and the Lifelong Learning Plan

The cost of various student fees, class materials, and textbooks are generally not free. For seniors on a strict budget, or for those who are trying to keep their net income below the Old Age Security (OAS) clawback threshold ($73,756 for 2016), taking advantage of the Lifelong Learning Plan (LLP) could be a suitable option to pay for these supplemental education costs. Continue Reading…

Can’t retire? Semi-retirement is more fun anyway!

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Jon Chevreau on Peter Armstrong’s On the Money: CBC.ca

My recent blogs on Semi-Retirement seem to have struck a chord.  After I wrote this online piece for MoneySense.ca: Semi-Retirement is the Future (and a version here on the Hub, under the headline The Next Boomer Wave: Semi-Retirement), I was interviewed by Peter Armstrong at CBC TV’s On the Money Show.

The context of the CBC’s Tips for Boomers segment was in part my new book Victory Lap Retirement, written with Mike Drak, who describes it as a “retirement book about NOT retiring.” The first of several excerpts ran in the Financial Post on Monday.

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CBC’s Peter Armstrong (Twitter.com)

After the CBC segment aired, Peter published his own blog covering similar territory, which you can find under the headline You’re Never Going to Retire — and Here’s Why. He picked up on my statement that the Millennials are going to live a long time and therefore will have an 80-year investment time horizon. I mentioned that a few weeks ago, when I gave a talk to T.E. Wealth in Ottawa about financial advice for Millennials.

Long-lived Millennials need to be mostly in stocks

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How Collecting can keep you young

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Old postage stamps from various countries on wooden tableBy Cher Zevala 

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

For your entire adult life, you saved diligently for retirement, but if you want to make the most of your savings, you need to remain healthy for as long as possible. Being physically active will keep your body in good shape, but your mind also needs exercise as you age — which is why you should consider starting a collection.

Humans have a drive to collect things; it’s what helps our species survive and thrive in an unpredictable environment. However, now that you have the time, you can begin collecting items of interest that you can show off to friends and fellow collectors. Here are a few benefits to starting a collection so you can be happy and healthy for decades after you retire:

Reduce Stress

Stress is terrible for the mind and soul, but it does dreadful things to the body, too. Research shows that excess stress ages your body’s cells prematurely, causing all sorts of age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and hearing and vision loss, before you might naturally develop them. Unquestionably, the less stress you have in your life, the better.

Research also shows that having hobbies can reduce stress as well as exercise, which is to say: quite a lot. Unless you feel like going for a run ― and few retirees can truthfully say they do ― you might start finding something to collect to cut down your stress.

Appreciate Beauty

There is beauty in the world, and with the right collections, you can prove it. Artwork, jewelry, books, and even droll items like stamps and coins can be evidence of the sublime. It doesn’t hurt to have pretty things around you, but you do have to locate and gather the things you find most precious and appealing.

Continue Learning

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Retirement as a Board Game

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img_8015by Mark Venning, ChangeRangers.com

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

At the risk of being too serious over a Labour Day long weekend, I decided to lay out some ideas for future blog posts. In the process, I found my way back to my newly refiled library of articles and reports related to a multitude of topics under the theme of aging and longevity.

This is one of my instinctive ways to begin thinking of the future: appreciate the threads of history and see how far we have come along on a particular subject.

Well, as it happens, when it comes to the subject of “Retirement,” maybe not that far. In some ways, the vocabulary associated with this concept still rests in the same dictionary from thirty years ago in the mid-1980’s to early 90’s. During that period in my retail career, I was setting up exhibits at Seniors consumer shows in Toronto, featuring travel-related products to a 55-plus market (which seemed to be the entry level, as I recall).

If you made the circuit up and down the aisles, you could satisfy all your “lifestyle” needs, from the Craftmatic bed (still going strong), to golf-oriented retirement resorts and back support systems. Twice in the day, you could sit in on a retirement planning seminar, featuring the top ten tips to finding financial security, before you returned to see the rest of the show, from RV sales to cremation services and vacation cruises.

Targeting the Seniors market

Fast forward to 1994, I found myself interviewing for, among other things, marketing positions that targeted this same Seniors market. None of that materialized, but I do recall one interview with the Canadian Snowbird Association in Toronto, where I was given a research project and as part of the process, make a business case to prove I really wanted to work with them. Everybody should be so lucky to be asked to do this. Excellent experience as it turns out.

One of the items the director tossed at me as I was leaving that first meeting was a twenty-page set of US and Canadian articles on the organization. Two main shout-out advocacy points for traveling seniors (notably the “over 65 age group”) were their “threatened” out of country medical coverage, and government clawbacks in health spending. Reading this now, by most press accounts this sounded militant back in 1993.

Thorny after all these years?

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Never mind a few years more Longevity, what about Immortality?

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longforthisworldbookWe’ve reviewed several books about Longevity over the nearly two years the Hub has been running, the most recent one being Mark Venning’s review of The 100-Year Life. (See Superlongevity: The 100-Year Life in a Blue Zone).

I mentioned this book in my talk Thursday to T.E. Wealth, in the context of the prospect of an 80-year investment time horizon for Millennials. (Implication of that: 100% stocks!)

But until now, for obvious reasons, we have held off on the “farther out” topic of immortality.

Even so, there is a growing literature on the topic of what I might term “ultra-longevity.” One in this camp is Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality.

Published in 2010 by science writing teacher Jonathan Weiner, the book focuses on a real believer in the possibility of human immortality: one Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, who he quotes thus: “When you start talking’ about five-hundred year humans, or one-thousan’-year humans, most members of the general public get a li’l bit nervous.”

Indeed, and Weiner himself seems skeptical, despite providing such a platform to Aubrey de Grey. As the back-cover blurb states, “Could we live forever? And if we could — would we want to?”

Continue Reading…