Social Security: A Surmountable Challenge

You’ve heard of artificial deadlines? Hmmm…retirement at 65 (or whenever) comes to mind. Well, how about an artificial milestone created for sensational headlines, contrived to bring attention to a non-existent crisis? Case in point: this week, retired school teacher, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, became the first boomer to apply for Social Security benefits. It was a field day for the school of chicken little reporting as phrases like looming bankruptcy, financial implosion, fiscal meltdown, Boomsday is Nigh (SF Chronicle), and even the suggestion that Ms. Kirschling was Public Enemy No. 1, made their way into print and broadcast. The Times (London) weighed in with its own: From boom to bust: the silver generation that could leave Uncle Sam broke. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue, who orchestrated the media event, set the tone with his term for the ‘crisis’: America’s Silver Tsunami.

Kudos to the Kansas City Star for its focus on the fix, of which there are quite a few, not to mention that we have 34 years (that’s four 8-year presidential terms) to implement them. Everyone is in agreement that we have a problem, although it pales in comparison to Medicare funding and rising health care costs. The version we prefer comes from the Social Security Board of Trustees Report itself: “The financial difficulties facing Social Security and Medicare pose enormous, but not insurmountable, challenges.”

Fixes that have both supporters and detractors include:

  • Raising the cap for FICA, now set at $97,500.
  • Raising taxes from the current 7.5% (both FiCA and Medicare)
  • Increasing the age of eligibility for full benefits (it is already at 67 for some)
  • Encouraging savings (now that’s a novel one!)
  • and so on…

Oddly enough, the possibility that the majority of boomers will remain in the workforce, as they have been declaring in surveys over the last several years, doesn’t enter into the crisis equation. If they do — and we think health insurance concerns will contribute to the decision to keep working — the projection of a smaller worker to retiree ratio, from 3 to 1 currently to 2 to 1 (less income, more pay outs), is just plain wrong. As of now, if you are 65 or older, you can be collecting Social Security benefits and earning an income (on which you pay FICA taxes, of course). It seems to us that we need to factor in productivity gains and the impact of immigration on the workforce. If there is anything to fear, it is that the high cost of medical care will gut Medicare. But Social Security is, in our opinion, a surmountable challenge. What’s needed is imagination and political will on the part of the elected and the electorate…now rather than later.

“An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.” — Winston Churchill

More reading:

Social Security needs fixing — and fast. Kansas City Star
Social Security: Scare tactics or true crisis? Lita Epstein, author, Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Security
Generation Ageless J. Walter Smith
Is Social Security in Trouble? Depends on Whom You Ask Knowledge@Wharton
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities


Live Long and Well

Have good work to do, and a brisk walk to it.
– Delfinio Lujan, merchant, herbalist
This simple recipe for a long and good life comes from a centenarian, one of the Living Treasures of Santa Fe, NM. It pretty much sums up our philosophy at 2young2retire. Work you enjoy is a health maintenance strategy and life extender. If what you are doing is also something that contributes to the good of society, so much the better. As it turns out, socially significant work is where the opportunities are — in teaching and health care, to name two. And many people 50 and older are feeling the call to make a positive difference.
But even you wouldn’t characterize your work as a form of giving back, if you keep working past the age when you are ’supposed’ to retire, you are giving back. Here’s why. You are likely to stay in good health for much longer. Everyone has a story about a relative or friend who retired and began to decline. The other side of the coin is that people who work — whatever their reason for doing so — have far fewer visits to the doctor. Maybe feeling relevant and necessary is good for us in ways that can’t be measured by medical science today. But given the high cost of medical care, every year you avoid needing it, is a blessing to you personally, and a gift to society and future generations.
Get Physical
The second part of the quote underlines a key ingredient for health maintenance after age 50: vigorous physical activity every day for the rest of your life. If you are lucky enough to live a mile or two from your place of work, you’ve got a head start. You can’t help but notice how urban dwellers tend to be much trimmer and fitter than those of us who are dependent on a vehicle for every errand.
If you work at home, you have to be that much more disciplined about exercise, making sure whatever you choose is fun, so you’ll want to keep doing it, yet challenging enough to make a difference to your cardiovascular system. Most people need about 28 days to get into a new habit of biking, swimming, weight work, yoga, tai chi or Pilates — three ideal practices for the mature body — every day.
Commuters, start campaigning for a fitness break at work. Most of the best employers have added gyms and instructors. It’s a rare executive these days who doesn’t understand the relationship between exercise and better morale and productivity. Take a page from a centenarian’s playbook, and plan to make good use of your own century on Earth.

Collective Wisdom

Even before the current hubbub about social networking as a source of insider information and tips, it has been possible to contribute — and read — reviews of products and services via sites like epinions.com and amazon.com. In fact, the input of ordinary people can build credibility for retailers — or discredit them — and is empowering for both contributors and those who read their reviews. Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, lets anyone with a passion for a subject become an instant expert — at least until his or her entry is challenged and/or edited by someone else.

With its 2 Cents Project, the San Francisco Chronicle hopes to create a pool of citizen-journalists “who agree to be accessible to The Chronicle via e-mail to provide commentary on the news of the day and share their expertise and experiences with our readers.” The project is open only to residents of Northern California (with the exception of Chronicle employees and members of other Bay Area news organizations). Priority is given to those who live in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Sonoma and Solano counties. But it’s a model we’d like to see replicated elsewhere.

Here’s how it works:

Two Cents correspondents get a shot, says the Chronicle:

  • When news breaks and we need to gather input from people but are constrained by tight deadlines.
  • When traditional means of finding sources for stories fail.When either of these circumstances occur, we e-mail requests for information or commentary to our correspondents and ask them to respond or to forward our e-mails to people they know who are able to respond. Sometimes we contact people who respond to our e-mails and interview them for stories. Sometimes we run a column of correspondents’ comments, along with their name, photo and name of the town they live in.

The new science of predicting success also draws on ‘the collective intelligence” of groups of people. The Hollywood Stock Exchange, for example, is adept at accurately predicting box office success and Oscar nominations. “Nobody knows anything,” concludes James Surowiecki, author of the article (The Science of Success), “But everybody, it turns out, may know something.”

Encore Careers

Marc Freedman is one of our heroes. In the midst of sound and fury about the boomers, his is a steady, reassuring voice of hope and reason. In his new book, Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, Freedman wastes no time in painting two starkly contrasting visions of the future. In one, boomers — ‘greedy geezers’ — on an endless, subsidized vacation, have sabotaged the economy, tipping the nation into decline. In the other, ‘boomer labor power’ fueled by Encore Careers — what he calls ‘purpose-driven jobs’ — makes life more meaningful, fulfilling and financially sustainable, not only for boomers themselves, but for generations to come.

Freedman, 49, founder and ceo of Civic Ventures, a think tank and incubator dedicated to “generating ideas and inventing programs to achieve the greatest return on experience,” shies away from the emphasis on voluntarism that characterized his earlier book, Prime Time: How the Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America. He believes that, given the right policy decisions and bold new initiatives to address the ‘experience dividend,’ millions of boomers will make a virtue of the necessity to generate an income later in life, and enter into a new phase of work that may be shorter in duration, but ‘weight more’ in impact.

What is needed, he writes, is a new social contract with older people that directs them not toward the outdated ‘freedom from work’ of an earlier generation and time, but ‘freedom to work.’ To illustrate, five ‘Encore Pioneers’ tell their stories and show what is possible when you don’t accept the status quo. Former car salesman, Robert Chambers, now provides low-interest loans and fuel-efficient cars to the rural pool in New Hampshire. After thirty years as a truant officer, Jacqueline Kahn began to train in her early fifties for her new career as a critical care nurse (see her featured in Time Magazine).

“In choosing work that is aimed at making a better world, these leading-edge baby boomers are challenging the definition of success for all Americans,” writes Marc Freedman. In the future he envisions, these examples of Encore Careers will be commonplace and the dire forecasts of those who saw inevitable social collapse caused by an aging society, will seem as absurd as Y2K.

Read this book and light your own fire. The Appendix, Your Encore, is packed with resources to help you find your way and keep the flame burning.  And there is an Encore website.  “The future is calling,” Freedman concludes. “What are we waiting for?”

Knock, Knock. Who’s There?

Some week ago, I was asked by a colleague in the aging field to consider serving on a panel on the use of the Internet by the older population, specifically, on how the Internet is creating a new ‘space’ for electronic elders, a la My Space.

No doubt people are jumping into that space. There was considerable buzz about the launch of Eons.com, the social networking site dedicated to people 50+ (or, it was, but the last time I checked, it was 49+). The zippy slogan, ‘loving the flip side of 50,’ certainly is a grabber, and anything that Monster.com founder, Jeff Taylor, would create, gets my attention. Eons was attracting money, too: $22M in the most recent round of financing. But from my own experience of writing a newsletter for the age group, I really wondered if there was a need for an age-segmented social networking site.

I signed up for Eons anyway (284 days ago, according to my profile), and joined five different groups — careers for the 50+, home-based business, books, yoga and long-distance grand-parenting — and after some interaction with other group members, I have to wonder along with Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs and expert on the social implications of communications technology: “Is being over 50 years old strong enough affinity? I’m not so sure.”

Maybe this is an idea before its time. New research published in Business Week suggests that may be the case. Among the Older Boomers (age 51-61), 8% are involved in social networking, for Seniors (62+), the figure is 6%. A huge generation gap. Yet, 61% and 70% of these same groups, respectively, are ‘on line,’ reading blogs and gathering information. Just not active in social networking. If this describes you, and you want to get your feet wet and see what the hubbub is all about, you might start with Social Networking 101.

And if you are among those entrepreneurs of a certain age who want to connect with your age group for whatever purpose, you could interpret these stats as an opportunity disguised as a problem. In the words of oft-quoted management guru, Peter Drucker: The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Leaving Life to Chance? Don’t!

In her New York Times article, Training to be Old, Claudia Deutsch interviews experts on the subject of how well, or badly, many of us are preparing for a span of years roughly equivalent to those spent building family and career. Here’s a comment that is worth your attention: “With the first wave of baby boomers already in their 60s, gerontologists are bracing for a tsunami of disgruntled postretirees who have left the psychic and physical aspects of aging to chance.”

If this describes you, don’t panic. Help with transition is available, although given the numbers — 78 million baby boomers alone — we have a long way to go to meet the need. Programs are beginning to turn up at local JCCs, YM/Ws and other social services groups. Look for a Next Chapter group or Transition Network (for women 50+) in your area. A lot of authors are jumping on the later life advice bandwagon. That’s not a bad place to start your inquiry.

You can expect financial planners to continue to focus on what they are trained to do — help you to manage your tangible assets so they will last as long as you do. But many have begun to adopt and train for a more comprehensive approach, perhaps because clients are demanding it. In our neck of the woods, 2young2retire has already certified one financial planner to facilitate the 2young2retire course and another is currently enrolled in the training. Facilitator Training is open only to people who have professional credentials, e.g. life/career/transition coaches, career counselors, social workers.

The 2young2retire course itself is a good model for what is possible. It asks a six (or eight) week commitment from participants to inquire into the important issues we’ll all face in a longer life span: staying healthy, smarter money management, ‘encore’ careers, entrepreneurial opportunities, community service, and intelligent travel. You reflect, you explore, you plan, you write down your plans. Good things happen.

Hungry for a ‘purpose-driven job’ in the second half of life? The MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Community College Encore Career Grants of $25,000 are designed to encourage community colleges to develop programs that help boomers transition into encore careers in healthcare, education and the social services where the jobs are many and qualified people few. Do good. Do well.

RETIRED, retired

Have you seen this new usage, doubling the word ‘retired’ meaning you really have quit working altogether? It just goes to show you how much things have changed on this subject. Nine years ago, when we launched 2young2retire.com, retired still meant exactly what it meant in 1935 when retirement became official: you were finished, done. Your working life was over. And most people were pretty happy about that.

Today, to be “retired, retired” (see CNN/MoneyThe Non-Retirement Retirement) is something of an anomaly. Credit (or blame) goes to the baby boomers, the generation that will finally put an end to the idea that people have an expiration date, like packaged food.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other word would smell as sweet.”

Retire, retirement, retiree. We seem to be stuck with these words, despite the qualifiers, at least until we come up with a better way to describe how we are really living (and working, and giving) in our later years, and who we have become: wiser, more thoughtful, patient, kinder, more generous. Someone once suggested to us that perhaps we grow not older, but deeper. We like that. Words are powerful, so choose wisely. It’s your call.

The Big Squeeze

If you belong to the Big Chill generation, welcome to the Big Squeeze.

A parent has become elderly and dependent on you. Whether physically, financially or emotionally, it all adds up to the same: you have switched roles. At the same time, your spouse, partner or child becomes needy — surgery, illness, layoff, or other life-altering event.

There you are, in a role few would choose willingly: squeezed between competing needs, pulled between the desire to do the right thing for those you love, and the need to take care of yourself so you can do the right thing.

Even if you have caring family and friends — and be grateful if you do — it can be a difficult period to get through. Some days are a blur of doing. On a good day, you feel like Chris Bliss, the amazing comedian who keeps three balls moving in time to the Beatles’ Golden Slumbers. Sometimes, it feel like a three ring circus, especially if you are working — even part-time — or have other obligations (who doesn’t?) You may feel happy to be ‘the strong one.’ You may feel satisfied, proud, almost heroic. But mostly, at the end of the day, you’re depleted. Send in the clowns, please!

A few things you could try to take care of the default caregiver you’ve become.

  • Humor. As Norman Cousins famously discovered, laughter is great medicine. “A good way to jog internally,” he called it.
  • Sit down for every meal.
  • Take a nap even if you are not a naturally napper.
  • Take deep breaths when you start to feel impatient or irritated and ask the person for whom you are providing care, to do the same.
  • Load up your Ipod or CD player with the music you really love and listen to it a lot.
  • Get exercise, preferably in the fresh air. Start an exercise program if you’ve been putting it off.
  • Keep the door open to all offers of help in whatever form they come.
  • Get a massage, manicure, facial. Whatever makes you feel cared for.
  • Keep visualizing the people you are caring for as the babies they once were.

Leap! She Says

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“If you wish to persuade me, you might think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.” — Attributed to Cicero

To a degree, good books do this, which is why they generate an instant buzz and word of mouth, why they tend to be remembered, the way people tend to remember Sara Davidson’s Loose Change, her landmark book of coming of age in the 70s.

Davidson’s new book, Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?, will also find an audience and have legs, we predict. The excerpt, published earlier in Newsweek, gives you an indication why we think so. She writes not as a keen observer and journalist, although she is both, but from inside 50+ angst, “the narrows, the rough passage to the next part of life.” Work dries up. Suddenly, despite awards and recognition for her hit shows, she “can’t get arrested.” Her nest empties and her lover leaves.

The narrows will no doubt ring a bell for many within the baby boom generation and for those of us who came before, although we may not have been quite so open about our vulnerabilities. Davidson’s candor is bracing. We, who have made a project of telling the good news about aging, admit that a lot of it is confusing, difficult and painful, and we don’t have very good guides about how to do it well.

Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives? will help. Although its focus is on the more aware, accomplished, successful segment of the boomer cohort who have the luxury of choice about their ‘next life,’ there are plenty of ah ha! moments for anyone willing to take some risks about the future. And a lot that will touch you and make you smile and nod in recognition. Davidson’s interviews with Carly Simon on her comeback; self-help guru, Joan Boryshenko on her fourth marriage; with Tom Hayden, about ‘putting [one’s] career drives down,’ and his former wife, Jane Fonda; with Bernard Lietaer (creator of the Euro); and with Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, stand out for this reader. Holzman’s advice mirrors the 2young2retire credo:

“You don’t have to figure it all out. Pick something and do it. Take a look at what’s out there and see what you’d like to stand next to. Or if you don’t see anything . . . Wait till lightning strikes…Because it always does.” Amen.

Wanted: English Teachers

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An ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher may not have made the Career Journal list of best careers for 2006, but it does supply some of the key ingredients that make these careers desirable.

• Good intellectual stimulation
• Strong job security
• High level of control and freedom in what to do
• Extensive direct contact with customers/clients

Add to this the fact that the demand for ESL teachers has never been higher, with long waiting lists and students applying through a lottery system. We believe ESL is a great ‘retirement’ career that can help you take advantage of the gifts of maturity:

• Strong desire to help and give back
• Diverse life experience
• Excellent people skills, including communications
• Patience, ‘big picture’ thinking

As a native English speaker, you have a skill that is much in demand around the world. If you’re bi-lingual, so much the better. If teaching is something you’re attracted to, you have made peace with the relatively low-salaries ($30K, give or take, for newcomers). The ESL teaching credential also gives you the opportunity to travel to interesting places around the world you might not consider otherwise. More information about training and other facts.