Put “The Conversation” on Your Calendar Soon...

The conversations about what we would like at our end-of-life are so avoidable … and so important. Anyone who has been through the experience of being with a loved for their final months, weeks, and days know how very difficult and emotional this can be. One type of experience leaves a feeling that a loved one having died a “good death”, living life on their terms, surrounded by loved ones and with a sense of peace. The other experience can be when there have been medical heroics and the loved one had no quality-of-life. They may not have had any of the aspects of life that make life worth living. In these cases, there can be a sense it was a “bad death”, with a lingering sense of sadness and guilt for the survivors. The difference between these experiences can be having had “the conversation” about end-of-life choices. During my lifetime, I have had the honor of being a part of this process with loved ones a number of times. Recently I heard that one of our very elderly cousins was in the midst of her transition. I was able to be there with her and her daughter as she passed away very peacefully. In talking to her daughter, I saw how beautifully her family had listened to their mother and honored her wishes for how she wanted to live her last days here on earth. My cousin had been on a feeding tube because of the danger of choking but this was not the way she wanted to live. When all three of her adult children were in town, they had the conversation with her, exploring the medical options, and how that would change how she could live....

At 65, I Still Want to Have It All...

Why work/life balance isn’t just for young people Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose July 2012 Atlantic magazine piece, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,  ricocheted around social media, just wrote a buzzy New York Times piece (A Toxic Work World) on how innovation around work and caregiving would be good for women, men and business. Taking a page from her new book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, she wrote: “The problem is with the workplace, or more precisely, with a workplace designed for the Mad Men  era, for Leave It to Beaver families in which one partner does all the work of earning an income and the other partner does all the work of turning that income into care — the care that is indispensable for our children, our sick and disabled, our elderly.” Work/Life Balance for All Ages That divide between working and caring Slaughter highlights is, I believe, plaguing the way employers approach the need for work/life balance for people at all life stages. According to our latest research at Encore.org, people at the tail end of the career path need work/life balance, too. Like younger families, they also need to balance caregiving with work or volunteering outside of the family. But in this case, the caregiving is about elder care and a commitment to grandchildren. When the places they want to work, however, are only keen to hire and keep people who can work full-time, year-round, they turn away an incredibly valuable resource. My Work/Life Needs at 65 What a difference a little more creativity in how we fashion work could make. Case in point: I’m a white 65-year-old man and a living example of the need to balance work and family. A few years ago,...

The New Boomerang Workers: Rehired Retirees...

How to go back to work in retirement where you had a full-time job   You’ve no doubt heard about boomerang kids who return to their parents’ homes in their 20s (maybe you have one). But there’s a growing group of boomerangers who are typically in their 60s: retirees who return to work part-time or on a contract basis at the same employers where they formerly had full-time jobs. If you’ll be looking for work during retirement, you might want to consider avoiding a job search and becoming one. Employers That Rehire Their Retirees A handful of employers have formal programs to rehire their retirees. The one at Aerospace Corp., which provides technical analysis and assessments for national security and commercial space programs, is called Retiree Casual. The company’s roughly 3,700 employees are mostly engineers, scientists and technicians, and Aerospace is glad to bring back some who’ve retired. “With all the knowledge these people have, we get to call on them for their expertise,” says Charlotte Lazar-Morrison, general manager of human resources at Aerospace, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. “The casuals are part of our culture.” The roughly 300 Aerospace casuals (love that term, don’t you?) can work up to 1,000 hours a year and don’t accrue any more benefits (the company’s retirees already get health insurance). Most earn the salary they did before, pro-rated to their part-time status, of course. Why Aerospace Corp. Brings Back ‘Casuals’ The “casuals” program lets Aerospace management have a kind of just-in-time staffing system. “It allows us to us to keep people at the ready when we need them,” says Lazar-Morrison. Ronald Thompson joined Aerospace’s casuals in 2002, after retiring at age 64. He’d worked for the company full-time since 1964,...

What It Takes to Turn Your Passion Into a Career...

Enthusiasm isn’t enough. Follow these tips from the author of ‘What Is Your What?’ (The following is an adaptation from What Is Your WHAT?, the new New York Times bestseller by Steve Olsher. You can now get a free copy of the book at the What Is Your WHAT? website.) We’re often told that if we pursue our passion and do what we love as a career, we will — to quote Confucius — never have to work a day in our life. And let’s not forget Oprah who popularized the phrase: “Do what you love and the money will follow.” In theory, pursuing your passion as a career should be easy, effortless and create a monetary nirvana where income flows and happiness prevails. Reality, however, demonstrates that few who follow such advice will ever reach their desired destination. When Passion-Following Turns Sour It seems like a dirty trick. We’re encouraged to chase the carrot and before we know it, we’re miles down the rabbit hole with nothing to show for our efforts but mountains of debt that may take decades to repay. Consider the countless examples of those who quit their day jobs to pursue passion-related opportunities (cupcakes anyone?) only to end up emotionally, spiritually, and financially drained. When you throw in the harsh realities of capitalism, the happy-go-lucky “if you build it, they will come” rhetoric is a blatant disservice to those who lack clarity on the elements truly needed to bring their anticipated utopia to fruition. Now, before the hate mail starts rolling in, I’m not saying passion isn’t important. I am saying that you need to focus on cultivating a sustainable career… not merely engaging in a hobby. Creating a flourishing existence that provides a...

Federal Agency Jobs Just for People 55+...

These two programs specifically want older workers to fill their openings Gary Olson put in 32 years as an analytical chemist at Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., including stints in R&D and on digital innovations. “I had a great career there,” Olson says. “I was never bored.” But worn down by Kodak’s constant restructuring and layoffs, in January 2002, at 56, Olson took a generous buyout offer. He and his wife moved to Seattle, Wash. to be closer to their daughter and her family and Olson kicked back for a few years. In 2005, he spotted a Craigslist job posting by the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging for a “senior environmental employee” at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Senior Environmental Employment Program and position were reserved for workers 55 and older. Intrigued, he applied. “I wasn’t going to do what I did for more than 30 years,” says Olson. “I wanted to do something different.” He got the job. The 2 Programs for Workers 55+ Ever heard of the EPA’s Senior Environmental Employment Program, which has been around for 31 years? How about the comparable, seven-year-old Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture? I hadn’t. These jobs are specifically designed to tap into the experience of boomers, yet not once in interviews for my Next Avenue column on job opportunities for people in their 50s and 60s did these programs or ones like them come up. (The idea for this column came from my editor who learned about them at the American Society on Aging’s recent Aging in America Conference. ) “Older workers are a largely untapped resource,” says Gregory Merrill, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Older Worker Career Center,...

How to Help Mom and Dad Move to a New Home...

Here are five tips to make the transition less traumatic for your parents For most people, moving from one home to another is exhausting. Even when we get help with packing and transporting our possessions, moving means changing countless aspects of our everyday lives — from making a new place for the silverware to potentially finding new friends. And it can mean saying goodbye to memories we’ve made over the course of years. Older adults often have a much harder time with the transition. For your parents, moving can go from merely taxing to highly traumatic. That’s when it becomes transfer trauma, also known more broadly as relocation stress syndrome. “You’re literally transitioning to a completely different phase of life, to a completely different environment,” says Tach Branch-Dogans, president and CEO of Moving Memories and Mementos of Dallas, Texas, who spoke at the Aging in America 2015 [www.asaging.org/aia] conference of the American Society on Aging [www.asaging.org] I just attended. That’s true whether a person is voluntarily downsizing or being moved into a nursing home, she says. Symptoms of Transfer Trauma Moving can result in a host of physical and psychological changes, including loss of sleep, agitation, depression, withdrawal, short-term memory loss, irritable bowel syndrome, loss of appetite and nausea, Branch-Dogans says. Tracy Greene Mintz, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Redondo Beach, Calif., who has worked and lectured extensively in the area of relocation stress syndrome, says loss of control is at the core of transfer trauma. “This week you’re going to be at home living independently; next week you’re going to be in assisted living. The abruptness with which we move older people … is very damaging psychosocially and emotionally because it strips the older adult of control,”...

6 Travel Tips for Midlife Adventurers...

You’ve done the backpack bit. Now, your journeys take planning. Preparing for a trip was simple in our youth: Stuff a backpack with a few changes of clothes and some personal items and head out to a grand adventure. Now, though, we may be gluten-free, diabetic, a little lame, sleep-deprived and out-of-shape. At some point, the inequity of age hits us all. That doesn’t mean we stop having adventures. It just means that for most of us, preparing for them is different — and should be. Here are six tips to help you make the most of your next big trip: Pack as if your bags may get lost. After being stuck in Italy for three days without my bags, I learned to carry a change of clothes (and several sets of underwear) in my carry-on. My husband and I usually check two bags: each contains half my clothes and half his. This ensures we both have at least some of the clothes and toiletries we need, even if an airline loses our luggage. Bring the food you need. If you must limit your diet — or eat every few hours — it’s easy to pack food to supplement what’s available at your destination. Peanut butter, small applesauce cups, rice cakes, crackers and meal replacement bars are portable and may be life-savers on the road. My three-week trip to India included many days when I was unable to eat the food available. One of our travel companions was diabetic. We were glad we’d each brought portable snacks and vitamins. Shed clothing as you go. Lugging heavy bags up the stairs in European train stations taught me to pack lightly. I save undergarments, sneakers and clothing that are near the...

6 Credit Score Myths Debunked...

How these scores really work and can affect your finances You likely know that your credit score is the litmus test lenders use to determine whether you’ll be a responsible borrower and deserve to be approved for loans and credit cards. But there’s a good chance you have one or more misconceptions about how credit scores are calculated and what can nick yours. While the actual calculations used by the three major credit reporting bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax and Experian) are confidential and complex, the underlying concept behind them is fairly straightforward: if you have a history of paying your loan payments on time and in full, generally you’ll have a great credit score. Credit scores may seem a bit complex and convoluted. However, it pays to understand how they work so you can make informed decisions about your finances. Here are six of the most common credit score myths to stop believing: Myth No. 1: Closing out your credit cards improves your credit score. If you’re thinking about terminating a card to boost your credit score, think again before you reach for the scissors. Here’s why: One of the five factors that determines your credit score is your debt utilization ratio, which is how much debt you carry relative to how much credit is available to you. So when you close a credit card, your available credit decreases, your debt utilization ratio increases and your credit score drops Myth No. 2: Closing a credit card erases its history from your credit report. Some people believe that once you close a credit card, its history disappears. This is false. Sure, it would be great if late payments and overdrafts on a card could be wiped away by closing the card....