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Forgive me for being slightly off-topic this week, but this has been occupying considerable real estate in my brain.

In January, outgoing U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued his “Parting Prescription for America.” It was a call to shore up the eroding impulse toward community. “The fracturing of community in America is driving a deeper spiritual crisis that threatens our fundamental well-being,” he wrote. “It is fueling not only illness and despair on an individual level, but also pessimism and distrust across society which have all made it painfully difficult to rise together in response to common challenges.”

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Dr Murthy’s statement struck a chord with me. It called to my mind a book I read many years ago that had a profound impact on my thinking about America’s past and future.

That book was Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah and four other scholars. Published in 1985, it is a sociological study of the balance between the competing pulls of individualism and community in American society.

The American CharacterThe thrust of the book (and I am relying on memory, as I loaned out my copy one too many times) is that four basic philosophical threads made up the early American ethos: The Puritan emphasis on community and the common good, a republican commitment to civic engagement, expressive individualism (freedom to be oneself), and utilitarian individualism (freedom to create wealth).

The book’s title came from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (published 1835 and 1840), which sought to identify those habits that would help sustain free institutions. De Tocqueville cited family life, religion, and participation in local governance as positive tendencies. But he also warned that individualism could threaten free institutions by making collective action harder to achieve. Habits of the Heart followed de Tocqueville a century and a half later and found him to be incredible prescient.

If you imagine a scale – the kind that Blind Justice holds in one hand – with community and civic engagement in one tray of the scale and individualism in the other, the balance today has tipped overwhelmingly to the individualism side, like a see-saw with a toddler up in the air and a grownup on the ground.

As Robert Putnam showed in Bowling Alone, all forms of civic engagement, even voluntary clubs and associations, are declining in participation and membership. Most mainline religious denominations are losing members. Labor unions are weaker than a century ago. The main reason seems to be our unwillingness to commit to any group that might impinge upon our individuality.

Everyone Wants to be FreeIndividual freedom is seductive. American culture salutes the individual who stands alone, who speaks his own truth, who resists all efforts to tie him down. In our Westerns and action films, the lone hero wins the day and then rides off into the sunset – alone. How many American movies glorify heroes who build a community together or work towards a common good? The last one I can recall was Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It was made in 1946 – before most of us were alive.

In Joseph Campbell’s retelling of the universal hero’s journey, a narrative arc that shapes human myths and stories across cultures, the hero gets a call to leave his world, passes through a threshold into adventure, faces various challenges, and then returns home. Our American stories follow this framework with one major exception – the hero doesn’t come home. He has no intention of returning home, only to be tied down by obligations to family, friends, and community – he insists on being a free individual.

So far has the pendulum swung that we no longer even have words to talk constructively about community or citizenship. Political leaders who speak about ethics, morals, community, or common purpose risk being mocked for invoking tired rhetorical phrases devoid of meaning. How can people build something together when the words themselves ring false, and the only acceptable discussions must be framed in terms of individual rights and individual outcomes?

I think about community often, because I believe in its value in my life and its critical importance in a healthy democracy. In my jobs and in my personal life, I have tried to build community, form teams, foster collaboration and achieve success for all. Then again, I might be compensating for my own guilt: I fled my native state as soon as I could – the only one of my siblings to do so – to have the freedom to live life on my own terms.

Still, I agree with Dr. Murthy. Our exclusive focus on individualism has blinded us to the equally American values of working together and talking together to make decisions.

It is nearly impossible for individuals acting alone to change the status quo. That is a reality people in power understand. But this is not about current or even past politics. Our cultural mythmaking is much older and much deeper than that. That said, if we do not want to remain a sharply divided nation of individuals perpetually at each other’s throats, we need to raise up some different American stories. We need to find ways to talk and ways to act that open possibilities of working together in our mutual interests.

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No. 75/February 12, 2025NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Deportation’s Impact on Long-Term CareUnauthorized immigrants make up about 4% of current long-term healthcare workers. If the Trump Administration implements its announced policy of mass deport…

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Just 10 years ago, there were 43.1 million Americans aged 65 and older. By 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that number will balloon to 83.7 million.

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Our so-called healthcare system, functioning with all the efficacy and efficiency of a rocket cobbled together from spare parts, is not up to the challenge currently and unlikely to be up to the challenge in the coming decades. Healthcare workers are in short supply; older patients are not.

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Little wonder, then, that when older adults present their symptoms, many harried and overworked physicians are inclined to respond with comments like, “What do you expect at your age?”

One thing we expect is to be taken seriously. Given the fact that more than one-third of total healthcare spending goes to caring for adults aged 65 and up, doesn’t it seem reasonable to expect healthcare professionals to listen and provide appropriate treatment?

One might think so. Yet it seems hard for many physicians to do. In a survey of older adults conducted by Age Wave and the John A. Hartford Foundation, only 11% gave an “A” grade to the health system overall, and only 23% were satisfied with how much choice and control they have over the care they receive.

The 4 MsWhile we wait for the emergence of the political will to design a more rational healthcare system, some thinkers are tinkering around the edges of the present one by promoting “Age-Friendly Health Systems.” The initiative is driven by the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in partnership with the American Hospital Association and Catholic Health Association of the United States.

To be recognized as age-friendly institutions, hospitals and other care facilities agree to the “4M Framework” in dealing with older adults:

• What Matters: Align care with the patient’s outcome goals and care preferences.
• Mentation: Prevent, identify, treat, and manage dementia, depression, and delirium across care settings.
• Mobility: Ensure patients move safely every day to maintain function and do What Matters
• Medication: Only use medication that does not interfere with the other 3Ms.

So far, nearly 5,000 facilities have either developed a plan for meeting the 4M framework (Level 1) or collected three months of data on older patients (Level 2). The Level 2 institutions get a badge and a public relations kit for announcing their age-friendly status. While there doesn’t appear to be any accountability to ensure performance on these measures, the age-friendly movement deserves credit for making healthcare institutions aware of their ageism problem and recognizing good intentions to address it.

Ageism Cuts Both WaysBut there is also a case to be made that some older adults expect too much of the healthcare system. To be specific, some expect modern medicine to grant them perpetual youth, if not eternal life.

This is also a problem of ageism, but in reverse. The expectations are driven by internalized ageism – the belief that looking and feeling old are catastrophic and must be forestalled at whatever cost. You’ll recognize this as the foundational belief that undergirds hair coloring, the cosmetics industry, the fitness and wellness industry, and plastic surgery. In other words, stoking fear of aging is big business.

Robert Kramer, an outspoken thought leader in the senior living industry, says that a doctor’s response of “what do you expect at your age” is a cop-out, but “it’s also a cop-out for an older adult to deny that their bodies are getting older and expect simple, no-effort solutions.” Expecting “a pill or a procedure to instantly fix problems and make you feel 20 or 30 years younger isn’t realistic.”

The late author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, in her 2018 book Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, skewers the illusion that right doctors, right exercise, and right mindset can allow us to outrun aging. Denial of our own aging may be an understandable reaction to a youth-worshipping culture, but it is not a particularly healthy approach to what is, in fact, a natural and inevitable process. Denial is also a clear sign that we have swallowed the poison – believing the ageist tropes that only youth are worthy of respect and admiration.

“We would all like to live longer and healthier lives,” Ehrenreich wrote. “The question is how much of our lives should be devoted to this project, when we all, or at least most of us, have other, often more consequential things to do.” The idea that we have much control over our cells, she argues, is an illusion.

Should we expect respect from healthcare professionals? Hell yes! But let’s remember that no amount of exercise, diet, meditation, or medicine can deny the inevitable forever. The sooner we accept our own aging as a natural stage of life, the sooner we can experience the pleasures and rewards that come with being chronologically gifted.

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I was surprised to learn recently from The Economist that you and I and all our peers are responsible for the ills of our troubled world. The article, written anonymously, is titled “Why People Over the age of 55 are the New Problem Generation,” with the subhead “Baby-boomers are keeping their bad habits into retirement.” Its premise is that we as a generation are still drinking, drugging, and spreading venereal diseases, despite being in our dotage. It implies that we also should turn down that blasted music!

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It's a fascinating generalization. After opening with a juicy anecdote set in America’s most typical retirement community – Latitude Margaritaville – the unknown author hurls out statistics proving that in wealthy countries around the globe, baby boomers are increasing their alcohol use, increasing their cannabis use, and changing marital partners more frequently than other demographic groups. The broad-brush generalization concludes with the observation that “the generations now ageing disgracefully were disgraceful in youth, and in middle age.”

Oh, dear heavens! One might well wonder what the author considers “graceful” behavior. Apparently we are irredeemable ruffians who never have and never will comport with musty Victorian standards of polite social etiquette.

If that is the standard against which we are falling short, I for one am happy to plead guilty. I respect Victorian architecture but never did think much of the social conventions.

The editors at The Economist received so many responses to the article that they ran a follow-up article two weeks later publishing some of them. But of course, the editors put their thumb on the scale by headlining the follow-up, “What Do You Think of Misbehaving Boomers?” I would share some of those comments, but I couldn’t read the piece unless I first purchased a subscription, which I was not inclined to do.

I did, however, see some of the responses on LinkedIn and Facebook. The upshot of the comments was that, aside from the blatant ageism, the transparent disdain for baby boomers en masse, the sloppy logic, and the broad overgeneralization, the article was a load of crap.

The responses on social media fell into several themes:

We’ve earned the right to play.* “Enjoying maybe the last decade of our lives – what seems to be the problem here?” * “No matter what the generation, if you’ve worked hard all your adult life, you deserve to do what you feel like doing during retirement.” * “If my boomer parents want to party, so be it. Let them enjoy life and go out smiling.” * “Aging doesn’t mean you should go to a monastery.”

The article is based only on generalizations.

• “Labeling an entire age group as a ‘problem generation’ overlooks the experience, resilience, and wisdom we bring to society.”
• “Too many meaningless labels and shallow generalizations have been produced by the mass media.”
• “This article just irritates me. It’s full of generalizations.”
• “Maybe we need to judge people as individuals based on their own actions rather than ascribing to them the supposed flaws of an entire generation.”

You just hate boomers.

• “You can’t offend anyone these days or you’ll get your head bitten off. Yet the younger generations seem to think it’s okay to bash boomers!”
• “When we were young ‘the youth of today’ was blamed for everything. Now we’re old and we are still blamed for everything.”

Readers were also quick to note that the anonymous writer did not let the facts get in the way of a good story. The article takes aim at adults between ages 55 and 75. The youngest members of the baby boom are 61 this year, so a healthy swath of “Generation X” were swept up in the elder roundup, and judging by the responses, they are not pleased. Nor are boomers.

The most frequent epithet was “clickbait.” If I were the editors of The Economist, I would find that comment offensive, the moreso because it is right on target. You expect this sort of nonsense in a social media feed. When it comes from a respectable mainstream publication such as The Economist, it is disappointing, to put it mildly. If the editors are content denigrating an entire generation for failing to adhere to their exacting standards of behavior, then we are justified in calling out The Economist for its ageist bias, inaccurate reporting, fuzzy logic, and dubious moral character. In a world already rife with conflict, the editors of The Economist should be held accountable for attempting to add intergenerational warfare to the conflagration.

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No. 74/January 29, 2025NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Another Fall Risk: Blood Pressure MedsClose to half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, or hypertension, which poses risks to the heart, kidneys, and nerves. But a recent study of patients i…

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If you believe life begins at conception, then consider me a native of Chicago. That’s where a young married couple who were about to become my parents were living when I was conceived. Once they learned they were expecting, however, the couple high-tailed it back to Louisiana, where both were from, and where I was born. By relocating, the couple unknowingly gifted me with an extra risk factor for dementia.

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Yes! According to an extensive study published in December by the Rand Corporation, being born in the South is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline. “Individuals who were born in the South face statistically significantly higher chances of developing dementia, even when controlling for many other factors,” the report states. The authors’ explanation is “possibly because the quality of education is lower in Southern states than in the rest of the country.” I haven’t seen the latest rankings to verify that, but it is generally understood in the South that the primary purpose of schooling is to nurture talent for Southeastern Conference football teams.

The Rand study was designed to figure out which among 181 potential risk factors were the best predictors of cognitive impairment and dementia 20 years later. The strongest predictors, it turns out, are an individual’s baseline cognitive abilities, their health, and their functional limitations. People who at age 60 were in poor physical health, had suffered a stroke, had lower cognitive abilities, and had functional limitations and certain genes were most likely to have dementia by age 80. Other strong risk factors were never having worked, having diabetes, having a body mass index of 35 or more, never drinking alcohol or drinking excessively, never exercising, having low engagement in hobbies and novel information activities, and not having a private health insurance plan.

On the other hand, the weakest indicators were parents’ health, family size, marital history, and demographics. Given that my mother developed Alzheimer’s, I worry that it might be hereditary. Based on this study, however, I am more confident that my mother’s lack of exercise, social isolation, lack of hobbies, hypertension, and fondness for sweets were more decisive factors than any gene she transmitted.

Lowering RiskWhat the Rand study also does is support previous research showing that up to half of the risk factors for dementia are totally within our control. They are tied to lifestyle decisions, and changing them significantly lowers the chances of experiencing dementia. According to the Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention, Intervention and Care, there are 14 modifiable risk factors:

• Untreated vision loss
• Untreated hearing loss
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• High LDL (bad) cholesterol
• Hypertension
• Physical inactivity
• Smoking
• Lack of education
• Social isolation
• Excessive alcohol consumption
• Depression
• Head injury
• Air pollution

To that list, Emily and Mitchell Clionsky, the authors of Dementia Prevention, add several other changes that can modify risk: Getting adequate sleep and treating sleep apnea, avoiding cannabis, and avoiding certain prescription medicines (including anti-anxiety drugs) and over-the-counter sleep aids.

“Regardless of your genetic inheritance,” Mitchell Clionsky says, “large population studies tell us if we really do maximize all the preventive things we can, we have a chance to reduce the risk of getting dementia by 50%.”

The greatest single risk factor for dementia, however, is age. Only 2 out of 100 people aged 65 to 69 have dementia. The risk roughly doubles for every five years after that. Among people who live into their 90s, 33 out of 100 have dementia.

But that’s a risk factor we’ll just have to live with.

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When I first began this newsletter, I made a conscious decision not to write about finances, and after researching this piece, I am remembering why. In brief, I am somewhat math-impaired.

But I was curious about some rumblings online, questioning the conventional wisdom about how much retirees could safely spend down from their retirement savings annually. For years, that safe rate has been pegged at 4%. Was that number still a good one? I plunged into two 12-page white papers by different analysts, as well as numerous articles in the financial press, trying to answer one basic question: Will I run out of money before I die?

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One reason I have avoided financial articles for so long is that I am not adept at complex calculations. A compelling attraction of majoring in journalism was the absence of a college math requirement. I say this to emphasize that I have no idea how the investment wizards came up with the 4% figure, and no amount of tutoring will help me understand it, so I can’t verify whether it was based on algorithms or fairy dust.

What I do know is that last month Christine Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning, reported that in 2025 the safe withdrawal rate is down to 3.7%. The difference is “capital market assumptions.” Translated into common parlance, the wizards now assume a lower rate of return on investments over the next 30 years.

Monte Carlo?But my confidence in that projection took a hit when Benz explained that it was based on “Monte Carlo simulations.” What? Are the wizards trying to suggest that investments in stocks and bonds are as risky as bets in a gambling casino? With further study, I learned that a Monte Carlo simulation is “a way to model the probability of difference outcomes in a process that cannot easily be predicted due to the intervention of random variables.” Translation: After running through all the possible variables, the wizards choose the most probable outcome. Given that random variables can include anything from wars to earthquakes to environmental calamity, I found that reassuring.

So what is safe? All my research has led me to a clear and inescapable conclusion, which I am happy to share: It depends.

It depends on the size of your nest egg. It depends on how long you live. It depends on how much you spend annually. It depends on whether the stock market performs as well as you hope for over the next 20 to 30 years. It depends on your health, and on whether you have long-term care insurance.

Keeping in mind my mathematical limitations, it appears to me that if your retirement savings is greater than $2million, you’ll probably be just fine no matter what. (Of course, there are exceptions. Actor Jim Carrey, who earned many millions more in his film career, returned from retirement because, he said, “I bought a lot of stuff, and I need the money, frankly.” Standard of living matters too.)

More VariablesIf you have less than $2million stashed away, a safe withdrawal rate comes down to four variables:

• Your retirement savings. For what it’s worth, the average American, aged 55 to 64, has retirement savings of $537,560, according to the Federal Reserve. Between ages 65 and 64, the average is $609,230.

How fast you spend. Hollywood hotshots aside, most of us live somewhere between Enough to Squeak By and The Life To Which We Wish We Could Grow Accustomed. Figure out where you fall on that spectrum and what you spend in a typical year. * How much other income you have. Include Social Security, as well as part-time earnings. * How long you plan to live. With longer lives projected for many of us, a 30-year span from ages 65 to 95 is typical for calculations.

Here’s an example of how the variables play out, at least in journalist-level math:

Let’s say your nest egg is $600,000, your Social Security check is the average $1,976 per month ($23,712 per year), and you spend $100,000 per year. A 4% withdrawal from savings nets you $24,000 (or $22,200 at 3.7%). Your income, Social Security and a 4% withdrawal, add up to only $47,712, leaving you $52,288 short of your expenses. You do your own math, but it seems to me that if you close the spending gap from your retirement funds, you’ll drain your savings in about 14 years.

If you want to enjoy more years of financial security, you would need to

• Increase income by working longer, and/or
• Cut back on your living expenses, and/or
• Sell off assets (i.e., home) to enlarge your savings.

(Not recommended: The Monte Carlo option. Do not lean on your Vegas nerve. Remember that the house always wins.)

Things look more promising when the savings reach $1.5 million. A 4% withdrawal is $60,000. With the same Social Security income, you would be looking at $83,712 to live on, and with a modest cutback in living expenses that could be sustainable for the duration.

But don’t take my word for it – consider the source. Get expert advice from a certified financial planner, who gets paid to understand this stuff.

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No. 73/January 15, 2025NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

When Disaster Strikes, Elders Are VictimsIn disasters such as the Los Angeles wildfires, elderly and disabled residents are the most at risk. In Hurricane Katrina, 71% of the victims were aged 60…

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If you are a male born in the first wave of the baby boom (1946 to 1957), you probably absorbed some problematic ideas about masculinity.

Yes, it’s true that we (I’m including myself, born 1951) lived through major social upheavals in the 1960s and 1970s that brought into question traditional values about gender roles and gender equality. And yes, we may have adopted “progressive” or “enlightened” views over time. But in our childhood years, before we had any choice in the matter, we were immersed in the waters of traditional cultural assumptions.

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I know this for a fact. I grew up on Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and other exemplars of the lone cowboy ethos. I saw movies about the brave heroes of World War II, prepared to sacrifice themselves for their country. I received clear instruction that I was “the man of the house” whenever my father was absent – a ridiculous thing to tell a 4-year-old. I was told that strong men did not cry and kept their cards close to their chest. If trouble came, I knew I had to “take it like a man” by hanging tough and taking action. I knew that men were the providers and performed their duty by working hard.

This conditioning, deeply embedded in our subconscious minds, made it more difficult to navigate the social revolutions of our adulthood, despite our best intentions. Today the subliminal messages beamed into our brains from the stable, traditional worldview of the1950s continue to make trouble as we approach or reach the end of our breadwinning days.

A headline in a financial publication sums it up this way: “Why So Many Men are Bad at Retirement.”

The answer is no mystery when we examine the messages of our childhood.

Work is life.Some men have made work the be-all and end-all of their existence. Some refuse to stop working – if they retire from one job, they find another. If they can’t work for pay, they may fill their days with renovation projects around the house, especially the physically challenging ones requiring manly deeds like scaling the roof. Edward Sousa, in an interview for The Guardian, recalls his father who worked himself into a heart attack. “He had retired by then,” Sousa says, “but he just kept going until he couldn’t.”

Many men have difficulty making the transition from work to life after work, particularly those who focused intensely on their career and linked their personal identity to their work. When work ends, they have difficulty finding a new identity.

Real Men Don’t Cry.A 2023 study looked at how holding masculine ideals – including but not limited to strength, endurance, virility, stoicism, dominance, and competitiveness – affected the health of older men. Short answer: Masculine ideals were associated with worse self-rated health, greater chronic illness, and more symptoms of depression. Ken Druck, author of The Secrets Men Keep, has observed that many men are unwilling to talk about their struggles with medical challenges, mental health, or the changes brought by aging. Men account for 80% of suicides, and rates are consistently highest in men older than 75. Older men are also far less likely to seek out support.

Is This the End?The programming from childhood even has an impact on how men and women view retirement. An MIT AgeLab study looked at how men and women describe life after career: Men used words like “rest,” “relax,” and “hobbies,” while women used terms like “freedom,” “peace,” and “time for me.” In short, says AgeLab director Joseph Coughlin, men see retirement as a destination, the end point of their careers and perhaps the reward for them, while women see retirement as the next stage in a continuing journey.

What is to be done? It is possible to unlearn the programming from our childhoods. All it takes is therapy and/or deep introspection – activities men tend to avoid like the cooties. If men cannot be convinced to examine and update some of their deeply held convictions about masculinity, perhaps some sympathy is in order. It’s not our fault (entirely) that we behave like this, really. We were brainwashed.

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The eulogies continue to pour in for former President Jimmy Carter after his death this week at the age of 100. There were accolades for his achievements in political life, chief among them his negotiation of the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, a rare diplomatic triumph. The praises are well deserved, as is a more charitable reappraisal of his Presidency.

Many have noted how Jimmy Carter led an exemplary life as a former President. To my mind, Carter is also an exemplary model for how we can live once we conclude our primary careers.

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Carter was only 56 years old in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s election forced him into early retirement. Becoming President of the United States is the summit of ambition for most American politicians, and many former presidents have been to take a homerun trot and a bow, giving occasional speeches and tending to their libraries. But for Jimmy Carter, it was not enough to sit on his front porch and watch the peanuts grow.

Instead, he took his considerable energies in new directions. Citizen Carter became an international peacemaker and a champion of human rights. The Carter Center, which Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter established in 1982, mediated conflicts around the globe, observed 114 elections, and spearheaded successful efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease, which paralyzed tens of thousands throughout Africa and parts of Asia. In 2002 Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

For one week every year, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter also volunteered to work on a Habitat for Humanity project, building affordable homes for people in need (and elevating the visibility of a worthwhile nonprofit organization). He also taught Sunday school weekly and found the time to write more than 30 books.

LongevityNone of us knows how many years are ahead of us when we wrap up our primary careers. Carter, it turns out, had 44 years to go – more than the 34 years he devoted to his naval and political careers combined. We may not live to be 100, as he did. But with the advances in health care and medicine that have added significantly to life expectancy, a post-career life of 20 to 30 years is highly probable.

Because of our likely longevity, the old concept of retirement, a word which suggests a withdrawal, no longer applies. Even if we are tired of doing what we did for the previous 40 years, we’re too young to withdraw from life. Besides, 24/7 relaxation gets boring in a hurry. The phrase “bored to death” is more than picturesque speech; it happens.

I don’t use the word “retirement” anymore, except to talk about what existed in the past. I prefer to think of post-career life as The AfterWork, a term which suggests openness to multiple possibilities. The AfterWork is an ideal opportunity to do something new, something creative, perhaps even something brave. What better time could there be to take chances than when failure doesn’t damage your reputation or destroy your standard of living? What better time to reinvest energy in those passions you once held but never had time to pursue?

There are numerous possible ways to do this: Starting a business. Working part-time in a field that is new to you. Picking up the piano or guitar or clarinet. Volunteering for a cause you support.

We may not win a Nobel Prize (though some of us probably deserve one), but we can accept the challenge of making the world better in our own neighborhoods and communities. Relieved of full-time employment, we have an opportunity to be good stewards and good citizens of the worlds we live in. More importantly, we can live fully all the years we are given. We can continue to be curious, to ask questions, to try out new experiences, and to find more self-fulfillment.

Jimmy Carter’s life sets a high bar, but it demonstrates how one person can continue to find meaning, purpose, and relevance long after the primary career closes. Instead of withdrawing from the world, Carter brought peace to nations at war, all-but-eliminated a dangerous plague from the planet, and championed the principles of democracy and human rights around the globe.

We, too, have more to contribute and more to do in our AfterWork lives.

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No. 72/January 1, 2025Happy New Year!NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Channeling Your Inner FlamingoWhat’s the most reliable way to assess your risk of falling? According to a Mayo Clinic study, it’s how long you can stand on one leg. Kenton Kaufman, …

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In the furniture business, where three generations of my family earned their livelihoods, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day was set aside for taking inventory. As I understand it, its purpose is to count everything left in stock, making sure the books are accurate (i.e., no merchandise “fell off the truck”) and having a credible dollar value for tax reporting. Taking inventory sets the business up for the new year.

This year I’ve decided to take a different kind of inventory. I’m taking stock of everything for which I am grateful.

There is solid scientific evidence proving that feeling gratitude is good for your health. Studies consistently show an association between gratitude and well-being. Studies have also shown that feeling gratitude improves relationships and lowers stress.

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I’m sure you have your own gratitude inventory, but here is mine:

First on the list is gratitude to you, my readers. You give me a reason to write. Knowing that hundreds of you read my posts each week gladdens my heart. Even more satisfying, I’m thrilled that many of you take time to comment. Having this online dialogue with readers reenforces my sense that we are a community, sharing common experiences.

(I should add that I am especially grateful to those who have committed to paid subscriptions. Thanks to you, I am able to convince the IRS that my publishing venture is more than a hobby.)

I am grateful for my wife – my co-conspirator and best friend for the past 50 years – who loves me enough to give me the space to do what I do in my own roundabout, inefficient way, while gently reminding me of ways I can be a better person.

I am grateful for my two children, who have found their way in the world despite their parents’ misguided attempts to advise them. I am proud of the people they have become.

I am grateful for my four remarkable grandchildren, individually four distinct personalities, and collectively a fiercely protective, tightly knit unit, treating each other with compassion and understanding well over 85% of the time. I am grateful for my daughter-in-law, who brings out their best selves.

I am grateful to my friends for their many acts of kindness, their conversation, and their companionship. I am grateful to my brothers and sister, who keep alive the memories of our shared past.

I am grateful to have a warm home, warm clothes, and warm food in this cold, dark season. And I am grateful for the compassionate people in this world who aid those who lack these comforts.

I am grateful to live in a country where I am free to speak out honestly, regardless of whether governing authorities approve of my opinions.

I am grateful for my good health, recognizing it as a gift that can be revoked at any time. I appreciate each additional year above ground as a blessing to be used wisely.

I am grateful for the people and organizations in the world working to end conflicts, relieve human suffering, and protect the environment of our one and only planet.

I am grateful for the musicians and the poets, the dancers and the painters, who capture the beauty and wonder of our world and evoke from us the best and deepest of human feelings.

I am grateful for the hope that finds its way into our hearts and gives us the strength to persist in the face of tragedy, disappointment, and suffering.

At this season, especially, I wish for you a life with many blessings and daily miracles worthy of your gratitude, as we take our next spin around the sun.

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Our society has a bad attitude about aging. This is well established. Youth gets the glory, old age seems gory. Most of the familiar, negative stereotypes about old age – feebleness, failing organs, decrepitude – are about the physical aspects. But a strong argument can be made that the aging process involves more than physical change. While our bodies are showing wear and tear, other non-physical traits are strengthening: patience, problem-solving skills, perhaps even wisdom.

Some psychologists and religious leaders even suggest that older adults have important work to do. That work, says Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, is “to complete their life journey, harvest the wisdom of their years, and transmit a legacy to future generations.”

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Schachter-Shalomi and co-author Ronald S. Miller wrote From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older. In it, they offer a new paradigm of aging that they call “spiritual eldering.” With our extended longevity, they write, we have the opportunity to offset our physical diminishments by developing extended consciousness. In other words, elders can become “sages,” offering their experience, mature judgment, and wisdom for the good of society.

The authors are neither the first nor the last to discuss spirituality in the lives of older adults. Many social scientists have noted that older adults tend to show increasing interest in spiritual concerns. Many have also suggested that old age has a purpose. “A human being would certainly not grow to be 70 or 80 years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs,” wrote the famous psychologist Carl Jung. Erik H. Erickson theorized that the eighth and final stage of life is when a person either achieves “integrity,” an acceptance of their life with all its past blessings and mistakes, or falls into despair.

What I find attractive about Schacter-Shalomi and Miller is their clear directions for how to pursue a spiritual path and their insistence that spiritual work is a critical task to tackle as the end of life draws nearer. I also respect Schacter-Shalomi’s bona fide credentials as a sage. A rabbi, teacher, and spiritual innovator, he was known for his work bridging different faith traditions. He was a revered leader in the Jewish renewal movement, which infuses traditional Jewish thought with the wisdom and spiritual disciplines of Buddhism, Sufism, and other traditions.

Three TasksSchacter-Shalomi saw three major tasks for older adults. Completing our life journey, he wrote, involves facing our mortality. An important step in that process is recontextualizing the past – reviewing our life experiences in order to see disappointing episodes not as failures but as sources of wisdom. Additionally, we need to forgive ourselves and others.

Harvesting wisdom means practicing spiritual techniques such as meditation, journaling, and life review to integrate life experiences, deepen understanding of self, and cultivate wisdom. The idea is to move beyond the roles and limitations society has placed on us and to connect with our deeper, authentic selves.

The final task, transmitting a legacy, follows from feeling a deeper connection to past and future generations, recognizing patterns and cycles in history and in our personal lives, developing greater capacity for balanced judgment, and finding the motivation to act as a steward of the earth and its resources for generations to come.

Consider how these tasks play out in a contemporary world plagued by ageism, a world that judges old people as elderly, rather than as potential elders.

Gerontologist and educator Jeannette Leardi tackles this problem in her recent book (which I highly recommend) Aging Sideways: Changing Our Perspectives on Getting Older. “We need to fill the spiritual void in [older adults’] lives and in our whole society that results from not recognizing the moral contributions that elders are uniquely capable of making,” she writes. “For if we don’t, we rob them, and ourselves, of opportunities to live more meaningful lives in all kinds of ways.”

All of which is to suggest that if you are not reflecting on your life and seeking “integrity” by integrating your past and what wisdom you draw from it, then you have some work ahead of you.

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No. 71/December 18, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

New Resources for Solo AgersUntil recently, older adults aging alone – without a partner or adult children nearby – had few sources of help or advice. Today they can turn to Facebook groups, in-…

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I just learned that I am a reducetarian.

According to Brian Kateman, who coined the word in his 2017 book The Reducetarian Solution, the label refers to one who deliberately reduces their meat consumption. Everything about that definition fits me except for the word “deliberately.” In my case, a reducetarian is one who deliberately wishes to remain married to a vegetarian and doesn’t want to cook his own meals for one.

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The fact that I am any variant of vegetarian, considering my upbringing, is remarkable. My mother, following the conventional nutritional advice of the day, planned for each dinner to have a meat, a green vegetable, and a starch. It was a healthy, balanced diet to grow on. But in recent years I, like many Americans, have grown accustomed to a diet with far less meat.

Our family started down the vegetarian path more than 20 years ago when our daughter, then a high school student, announced that she was vegetarian. Her motivation was horror at what she had learned about factory farms and their cruelty to animals. My wife, a full-time executive, declared that it was physically impossible to prepare different meals for different family members. Her solution was that we would all eat vegetarian meals from then on.

I had misgivings. Based on the foods I grew up with, I pictured vegetarian living as an unappetizing diet of salads, frozen broccoli spears, mashed potatoes, and canned spinach. Fortunately, the growing popularity of vegetarianism has inspired thousands of cooks and dozens of great cookbooks. I have learned to enjoy black bean burritos, pasta with pesto, garbanzo beans, and all manner of grilled vegetables, to name a few favorites. I have come to appreciate, if not love, tofu, and in the spirit of ecumenicalism, I have made my peace with seitan.

In any case, by the time our daughter left the nest for college and career, my wife had deepened her own commitment. She reasoned that there was far too much violence in the world already and she wanted no part of enabling violence towards animals. So vegetarian meals have continued at home.

Out of the house, however, my wife has no problem if I order the occasional hamburger, chicken sandwich, or lamb chop in her presence – hence the reducetarian label. I feel bad about the animals, too, but I’m not ready to make a stand that requires total abstinence from meat.

Dietary DistinctionsThe profusion of vegetarians in the land has brought confusing distinctions between their degrees of practice. These distinctions become important when you are inviting company to dinner. Just to be clear, a lacto-vegetarian does not eat meat, fish, poultry, and eggs, but is okay with dairy products. An ovo-vegetarian does not eat meat, poultry, seafood, or dairy products, but is okay with eggs. Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat no meat, fish, or poultry, but allow dairy products and eggs. Pescatarians eat no meat, poultry, dairy, or eggs, but do eat fish. Vegans eat none of the above. Reducetarians eat their vegetables with displays of unbridled enthusiasm but eat meat when they can get away with it.

Diets for Older AdultsPeople choose vegetarianism for a variety of reasons, from animal welfare to environmental impact. But all vegetarians, at least in part, choose their diet for health reasons. The scientific consensus today is that “appropriately planned” vegetarian diets can meet the full range of nutritional needs. And there are numerous health benefits. Vegetarian diets typically result in lower consumption of saturated fats, cholesterol, and animal proteins, along with higher consumption of complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber. Studies credit these diets with helping prevent and treat heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, renal disease, dementia, diverticular disease, gallstones, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Sounds great, but here’s the caveat: Our nutritional needs change as our bodies age. We need less of certain nutrients and more of others. Some nutrients that we absorbed easily in our younger days, such as iron, now require us to consume larger quantities to get the same benefit. All of which is to say, that older vegetarians must plan their diets with great care – and perhaps with the guidance of a dietitian – to be certain of getting all the nutrition they need to maintain healthy bodies and sharp minds.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Older adults need more calcium than younger adults to maintain bone health.
• Vitamin D is also critical for healthy bones. One way we get it is through exposure to the sun. If we are not spending much time outside, however, we need to find it from food sources.
• For vegans, it is especially critical to focus on protein, calcium, vitamin B12 (which is not present in plant foods), and vitamin D. Vegetarians who are not vegan can fill these needs adequately from dairy products.
• Vegetarian diets tend to have fewer calories and saturated fats – great if you want to lose weight, but potentially problematic if your appetite diminishes. Be careful that your diet enables you to maintain a healthy body weight.

Bottom line, vegetarian diets can be healthy and can lower risks for certain medical conditions. But do not assume that a diet that served you well ten years ago is adequate for your body today. Eat wisely.

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I am among the 48.4% of American voters who are (choose one or more) [devastated/heartbroken/angry/ disappointed/ anxious/ frustrated/ despairing] over the 2024 Presidential Election result.

Hundreds of people have taken to print and digital publications in recent weeks to offer their own answers to the big questions: Why did this happen? Is this the country I thought it was? What happens next?

I will leave these questions to the pundit class, who are able and more than willing to offer their opinions. But another question has launched a hostile takeover of my brain: What do I do now?

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In the days since recovering from the initial electoral shock, I have felt welling up in me a resolve to do something. But what?

Before exploring the “what,” however, I need to say a few words about why this is an issue for me.

Not Plan ATrue confession: This was not how I envisioned my retirement.

For many years I participated in civic life and worked for social change. I was employed by several nonprofit institutions that tried to make a difference for people with little means or opportunity. I worked to strengthen relationships between my synagogue and the residents of the neighborhood in which it sits. I sat on several nonprofit boards. I held leadership positions long enough to recognize that leadership, at its core, is an opportunity to get beaten up by your friends.

But when I made the momentous transition from self-employed to self-retired, I intended to put all that behind me. For several years I have enjoyed watching, from my comfortable position on the sidelines, as the world continues madly spinning.

This year’s presidential election shocked me out of my lethargy. For reasons I can’t entirely explain, it has made me feel guilty for remaining on the sidelines in what feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment of crisis. And so I have been stumbling around for answers to what I can and should do.

Three InspirationsThree recent essays have influenced my thinking more than any of the excited punditry declaring democracy has failed, all hope is lost, who is to blame, and reasons to renew your passport.

The first essay, by a young activist named Sam Delgado, discusses how belonging to a community can provide the emotional support that humans need to survive and thrive, particularly in times of loss. She also points out that community building is not a one-and-done activity. “It requires consistently showing up, being willing to give and take, and managing uncomfortable disagreements.” This observation confirms my own experience – it’s easy for people to volunteer for one-day or one-hour feel-good projects, and hard to find people willing to make the long-term commitments necessary for meaningful change.

The second piece, by a postdoctoral research fellow in psychology named Liza M. Hinchey, extols the benefits of performing small acts of kindness and connection. Small acts can add up to big results, she says. “Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective,” she writes. “This is true at multiple levels: between individuals, between people and institutions, and between cultures.” Connecting with others “strengthens relationships, which strengthens communities, which influence societies.” Her essay gives me hope that even little things I do can be change agents.

The third is by Lou Blazer, who writes a great newsletter called We’re All Getting Older. She writes about the work of Deepa Iyer, a social action movement builder and the author of Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection. Iyer answers the question of “what can I do?” by describing 10 roles that a person can play to make meaningful contributions. Briefly, the roles are weavers (connecting people and ideas), experimenters, frontline responders, visionaries, builders, caregivers, healers, disrupters, storytellers, and guides. This strikes me as a helpful way of seeing how our own strengths and abilities, varied as they are, can help communities and organizations move forward.

The Way ForwardTaken together, these three readings have pointed me in a general direction that makes sense for me: Something involving community-building, more meaningful personal connections, and small acts of kindness.

I know that nothing I do on my own will change the course of American politics or save the nation from an authoritarian government. But I never thought I could.

I cannot ignore, however, the stirrings of what I call the Prophet Motive. I believe I have a calling to act in the interests of justice, fairness, and decency.

Though I’m still exploring the “how,” I accept an obligation to play a small part in reaching across lines of race and class and wealth, building connections, listening more intently, and looking for ways to build partnerships and community. I sense that my rightful place is, in the words of songwriter Iris DeMent, “working on a world I may never see.”

I’m coming off the sidelines. What are you going to do?

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No. 70/December 4, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

A Gram Scam HomerunA British telephone company has unleashed upon unsuspecting phone scammers an A.I. granny, Daisy Harris. Daisy’s mission is to waste scammers’ time, so they have less time to c…

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Note to Readers: While I am traveling this Thanksgiving Week, I am posting a reprint of a 2022 post for your post-prandial reading. I’ll be back next week with fresh grist.

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In an article in Psychology Today, Dr. Chris Gilbert tells the story of her next-door neighbors’ 13-year-old pit bull, who walked with a limp and seemed uninterested in life. Trying to discover what might spark the dog’s interest, she threw an old tennis ball. The dog immediately ran to retrieve it and bring it back for another toss. Over several weeks, as their play continued, the pit bull’s limp disappeared, and she acted more like her younger self.

The moral of the story: when you find what gives an old dog joy, you may give them a new lease on life.

And what, you may well ask, does that have to with me, as I am not an old dog?

Just this: We know that children need to play, puppies need to play, kittens need to play, bear cubs need etc. etc. But elders need to play too. Contrary to folk wisdom, we never outgrow our need for play.

Allow me to explain.

In children, play is key to helping young brains develop fully. Through singing songs, playing games, stacking blocks, and pounding xylophones, children learn to communicate, they sharpen their motor skills, and they learn to solve problems. Play creates a foundation for formal and informal education.

Play has a different function for us as we age. Play helps keep our minds sharp and our outlook positive. Many studies have confirmed a strong link between playfulness and well-being in older adults.

Besides, why should children and puppies have all the fun?

Play for Play’s SakeLack of play also has consequences. In the 1980s, Dr. Stuart Brown led a study of homicidal young men and found that the absence of play was a common factor in their lives. He later studied animal behavior with Jane Goodall and concluded that humans are designed by nature to enjoy and engage in play throughout their lives.

Brown defines play as “apparently purposeless activity that’s fun to do.” In a TED talk he gave in 2008, he says engaging in play creates an altered state that releases endorphins, which in turn can contribute to optimism, joy, stress release, and a stronger immune system. Brown founded The National Institute for Play, to broaden awareness of the benefits of play for all ages.

Now let’s zoom in on our age group.

“Our society tends to dismiss play for adults,” writes researcher Margarita Tartakovsky in a paper on “The Importance of play for adults” (2012). “Play is perceived as unproductive, petty, or even a guilty pleasure…. But play is just as pivotal for adults as it is for kids.

“Play brings joy. And it’s vital for problem solving, creativity, and relationships.”

Obviously adult play and child’s play are different. When we talk about play or playfulness for older adults, we are looking at a wide range of activities with one common feature: they bring us joy. They may even be activities we are passionate about. We are also talking about a playful attitude in going through life. According to the research, older adults who are playful are upbeat – cheerful, positive, enthusiastic people. The playful adult also builds up more resilience to weather the inevitable hardships and heartaches that life brings.

Adult-Appropriate PlayHere are some ideas for playful practices and activities. Some are stupid. Some are beyond stupid. But I hope they spark some playful ideas of your own (and if they do, please share in the comments.)

• Get down on the floor with children – grandchildren are ideal if you have some, or rent someone else’s. (Also, be sure someone is nearby should you need help getting back up.)
• Learn to play the guitar.
• Learn to play the guitar behind your back.
• Take those piano lessons you gave up on as a teenager.
• Write a song.
• Compose a sonata.
• Sing aloud. Blend your voice with someone else in a duet. Blend three voices into a trio. Take it on the road.
• Perform at a karaoke bar.
• Practice sketching nature, plates of fruit, or patient pets. Experiment with watercolors or oils. Become one with your brush.
• Roll up your sleeves and stick both hands into a mess of wet clay. Sculpt it. Create ceramic plates and bowls.
• Tie-dye your tee-shirts.
• Master knitting. The world never has enough bright socks or warm sweaters.
• Learn basic woodworking. Figure out how chairs and tables are put together and create some of your own.
• Get into scrapbooking.
• Keep a journal.
• Learn to play bridge. Join a foursome.
• Play chess.
• Take up golf or tennis.
• Go fly a kite.
• Swim with the dolphins – or at least the swimmer in the next lane.
• Take a class in comic improv. Amaze your friends with your witty repartee.
• Dance dance dance.
• Act in a play.
• Play charades with friends.
• Attend a murder mystery party.
• Spend a day channeling one of the Marx brothers.
• Go for a long hike in nature.
• Watch birds.
• Go camping.

You get the idea. Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Follow your passions. It’s good for you.

And remember: You’re never too old to have a happy childhood.

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Gallons of ink have been spilled over the problem of people (men, mostly) who find retirement boring. They have abundant free time, and nothing to do. This is a legitimate problem because boredom is frequently associated with depression and loneliness.

There’s no use crying over spilled ink. But relatively little attention is paid to the problem of retirees who don’t have enough “me time” because they are kept busy doing chores and favors for other people, the ones who assume that because they are retired, they must have plenty of free time.

I believe I am among those with not enough time for myself. My wife believes that is absurd.

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This discrepancy in perception may be a product of our very different work styles.

My wife is a model of efficiency. Since she formally retired two years ago, she claims she spends no more than three days per week on her consultancy business. However, when you add on the activities she has taken on – including visiting friends, attending to family, Pilates classes, online courses, and volunteer commitments – it appears to this outside observer that she is going full speed ahead all the time. Her calendar is chockablock with meetings and Zoom calls and presentations, with scarcely more daylight between them than when she was employed. A born multitasker, she strives to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run. If not 65.

I am the tortoise to her hare. To me, a busy day is one with two scheduled events. When I am not eating, sleeping, or exercising, I am researching and writing about positive aging. Any time left over, once I make my weekly deadline, is devoted to writing a book.

People have asked me how long it takes me to write a weekly essay. The answer is about 12 hours – but spread over five days. Unlike my efficient spouse, I do not find that words come in a steady flow that can be captured on a timeclock. They come only with effort. When that effort is too much, I give myself a break from the work and divert myself for a few minutes before diving back into the task.

Me Time, We TimeMy wife thinks that whenever she sees me scrolling through Facebook or watching YouTube videos on my computer, that obviously I am not busy. Clearly, she does not fully understand my writing process. Or perhaps I need to rethink my process.

If I had my way, my “me” time would extend from the moment I wake up through to dinner time. It is obvious that I will never get my way. There is dry cleaning to pick up, groceries to unpack, dinner to prepare, and occasional technical glitches to resolve. A long-time friend whose first language is not English wants to know if I can help write her business plan. My synagogue wants to know if I would help write a grant proposal. My wife has agreed that we will babysit for our four grandchildren. The housing co-op wants me to serve on a committee.

No, dawn to dusk “me” time isn’t practical, nor would it bode well for maintaining social connections (to say nothing of maintaining a marriage). But constant interruptions are not a recipe for thoughtful writing.

The only way forward that I can see is setting reasonable boundaries. I am thinking perhaps to block off four hours every weekday afternoon as do-not-disturbable writing time. During those hours, I will close the door to my office to signal my intention to my wife. I will also turn off my phone and make a sacred vow not to check email or social media. That leaves mornings for exercise, classes, meetings, and calls, evenings for meal prep, meals, and conversation.

The Boundary ParadoxWise and eloquent people have written about the paradox of boundaries. Suffice it to say that many of the most creative minds attained their greatest achievements when they were forced to work within limitations. What I realize is that by setting boundaries, I am not just keeping out interruptions. I am also binding myself within a limited timeframe. At present, in accord with Parkinson’s Law, my work has expanded to fill the time allotted for its completion. I am betting that I will be just as productive in fewer hours.

I am hopeful that this boundary works well for both of us. The world has far too many border disputes as it is, and we do not need to add another one to the pile.

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No. 69/November 20, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

New “Medicine” for Loneliness: A Social PrescriptionSocial prescribing, a practice that began in Great Britain, is when a physician prescribes a non-medical support or service – art classes, a c…

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I started The EndGame to celebrate the positive aspects of getting older. As you and I are well aware, positive aging flies in the face of conventional wisdom and omnipresent stereotypes, which paint old age as a pitiful one-way path consisting only of suffering, senility, decline, disability, decrepitude, and ultimately, death.

If that’s what you believe, you’re right!

If you believe old age comes with positive benefits that make living more satisfying, you’re right!

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The difference is a matter of mindset. As the oft-cited 2002 study led by Becca Levy of Yale University revealed, people who have positive beliefs about aging live an average of seven and a half years longer than those who regard aging as a negative. Later research has found that positive mindset is associated with lower blood pressure, reduced dementia risk, and a longer, healthier life generally.

You don’t have to be a Pollyanna, papering over the real physical and mental challenges as if they’re mythical. But you can be a realistic optimist. For example, you accept that you’re no longer an Olympic contender, but you can still swim or run or play basketball just for the enjoyment of it.

On the Bright SideSo let’s accentuate the positive. To help adjust your mindset, consider some of aging’s better attributes:

You’re wiser. All that experience you’ve socked away is proving useful. You’ve been around long enough to have seen it all at least once, and you can recognize the patterns. It may be new to younger folks, but you’ve seen this movie before, and you even know how it ends. If someone compares you to Yoda, take it as a compliment.

Your mind is sharper in some areas. Forget dementia. You may slip an IQ point or two because you’ve lost your lightning quick, Jeopardy-worthy recall, but your emotional intelligence and social intelligence generally improve with age.

You’re better at resolving conflicts. Perhaps it’s because you understand relationships better, or because your greater empathy lets you see more than one side to a problem. Whatever the reason, research shows older adults have greater ability to resolve conflicts.

You’re a better problem-solver. You’re better able to deal with complex problems. Alan Cohen, a professor in the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, says that’s because older adults have greater psychological resilience and tend to be “more we-focused than me-focused.”

You care more about connections. Relationships with family and friends matter more as you age. And with paid work out of the picture, or at least off the front burner, you have time to cultivate them.

You don’t care what others think. You’ve reached that level of self-confidence and self-acceptance that frees you from giving a flying flip about society’s expectations of you. It’s nearly impossible to embarrass you. You’re not crazy anymore – you’re eccentric. So fly your freedom flag: Do you want to wear white after Labor Day? Go for it.

You’re still alive. It’s a miracle! You’ve managed to survive this long, despite all. And who knows? You may have 20 or 30 years left in you if you keep exercising and eating your kale. So do yourself a big favor: Enjoy the heck out of it!

What are other advantages of aging? Please share your own ideas in the comments.

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First, my apologies for not showing up in your inbox for the past two Saturdays. It was not my intention to abandon you. Knowing that I would be going on vacation for 10 days, I selected two previous posts and set them up to be published on those two dates. To my surprise, neither went out to you. Since Substack never makes mistakes, I must assume that I did something in the setup that did not compute, which I regret.

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Speaking of the vacation, it was quite wonderful – good times with family and friends, good music , and great food – but getting there was an adventure. I was flying to Baton Rouge, changing planes in Charlotte. But the flight to Charlotte landed 45 minutes late. Once I disembarked, I speed-walked from Terminal A to Terminal E to make my connecting flight to Baton Rouge. I arrived at the gate breathless and five minutes before scheduled takeoff – however, that was ten minutes after the ground crew had seated all passengers and closed the gate. I could see my plane parked just outside. Inside the plane, some lucky standby passenger was buckling into what should have been my seat. Waving my boarding pass at the attendant did not produce the desired result. Sorry, sir, but regulations require blah blah blah. She did offer me a standby seat on the next flight to Baton Rouge – every seat for that flight was taken, she said.

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With the assistance of the airline help desk, I upgraded to a guaranteed seat on the next flight. It was scheduled to board four hours later, so I settled down for a leisurely dinner and a stroll or two through the Charlotte airport.

During my wait, I found out why flights to Baton Rouge were fully booked. Seems some entertainer named Taylor Swift was performing in New Orleans the next day, and Swifties were converging on Louisiana by air, ground, and sea.

More DelaysThe next flight was delayed too. By the time the plane actually departed, with my four-hour wait stretching to five and one-half hours, I was anxious about my rental car reservation in Baton Rouge. The estimated arrival time was 11:30 p.m. The rental car counter closed at midnight. Given the way things were going, would I be on the ground in time to pick up my car?

Not to worry. The plane landed more or less on time, and the rental desk even stayed open later to accommodate passengers arriving on the delayed flight. It also didn’t hurt that in Baton Rouge the distance between baggage claim and ground transportation is 75 feet.

I filled out the usual paperwork for the rental and was handed a contract and the key, which was not a key but a remote. The agent directed me to the third floor of the parking garage. It was now about 12:15 a.m.

I looked for the compact car I had requested. There were only two vehicles on the third floor. Neither was a compact. (Thanks, Taylor.) I found the license plate that matched my contract and stepped into the driver’s seat of a Ford Behemoth. It was an SUV of some sort – bigger than a Prius, smaller than a moving van.

As I stared at the unfamiliar instrument panel, several things became clear to me:

1. The parking garage is incredibly dark.

2. I have driven only Japanese cars since 1972.

3. The last time I shopped for a new car was six years ago.

4. I have no clue how to start the engine.

The dashboard had a button in roughly the same place as the ignition on my Prius. When I pushed it, music flooded the vehicle. Okay, not that one. But I saw no other obvious buttons.

How Does It Work?Not wanting to spend the night in the Baton Rouge airport parking garage, I returned to the first floor, where one lonely employee was checking out cars as they departed. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m from another century and I can’t figure out how to turn on the engine.”

She assured me that there was an ignition button, close to the steering wheel. I thanked her and returned to the car, and with the aid of the overhead light, I found it, right where she said it would be. Now, to put it in gear….There was no gearshift. Instead, there was a circular dial with familiar letters to indicate the gears. I tried to turn it. It didn’t move.

Back down to the first floor and the helpful attendant. I explained the problem. “You have to keep your foot on the brake,” she said. Right. Back to the car. Eureka! It worked!

Now how to turn on the lights? I click the turn signal and wiper wand, to no effect. But never mind – the headlights are already on! Maybe I can figure out how that happened in the morning.

And with the greatest trepidation, I slowly maneuvered the big beluga out of the garage and onto the dark, empty streets of Baton Rouge.

I have now gained the necessary experience to drive a whale of a car – not an experience I sought, but a valuable competency for living in the current century.

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No. 68/November 6, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Having a Satisfying Post-Career LifeWhat does it take to have a satisfying life after you hang up your spurs? According to an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “Retire Without Regret…

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No. 67/October 23, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

New Book Documents Preventable Elder DeathsEldercide: How It Happened, How to Prevent It is the latest book by Brandeis University scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette. In it, she documents the u…

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The kitchen renovation is 95% complete, our finances are secure again after the latest incident of identity theft, and we have planned, executed, and survived three home invitational events around the Jewish High Holidays. Now, finally, we have returned to the front burner the task of assembling everything our children need to know when one or both of us departs this earthly vale.

It is a somewhat macabre enterprise, when we both are enjoying good health, to make plans for an eventuality that might be 20 or 30 years hence. Then again, there’s always the risk of being hit by the proverbial bus. Regardless, we feel compelled to compile. We feel an urgent need to gather up the various pieces of our lives, organize them into a neat package, and share them with our children, who will surely protest that we are being morbid, and why are we even talking about this now? Still we persist, driven by a desire to spare them an anguished scavenger hunt without our guidance.

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Back in the day (I’m told), you could tie up the deceased’s loose ends by checking their mail for a month and noting all the bills. That doesn’t work anymore, not when the bills might be automated withdrawals from your bank account or a credit card. Now you need to note online accounts, and passwords, and most important of all, the password for your phone (because some of your accounts require two-step verification and step two is a text to your phone).

Three years ago, we took a first stab at the task, although in truth, it was more for my wife’s benefit since I am the one in charge of finances and record keeping. I prepared a document that covered bank accounts, passwords, and a rundown of recurring monthly bills, including those being paid electronically. It was a start, but barely. Today it is totally out of date and inadequate for guiding our progeny.

What to IncludeHere are things we now know we need to include:

• Banking. Bank account numbers, ATM passwords, and passwords for online access are a great place to start. Recently a banker shared this important tip: By giving our son or daughter authority to access the accounts, they can get at the funds immediately, which might come in handy for paying funeral expenses. Without this extra stipulation, they would have to wait for the wheels of the legal system to spin, a process unlikely to speedy or efficient.
• Safe deposit box. They need to know where it is, where the key is, and some idea of what’s in it. (Another tip: don’t leave the original copy of your will in the safe deposit box, as that will be frozen quickly. Leave a copy in the box and keep the original in your home or in this tidy package.)
• Investments. In our case, that’s simple: two retirement funds, with different firms and different advisers. For more aggressive investors, find all stock and bond certificates. Again, online access sites and passwords.
• Insurance. Life insurance and health insurance policies, and contact information.
• Credit cards. There are several, each with different pass codes. We need to include online access to both so they can check any unpaid balances.
• Property. We need to locate the deed. If we were still paying on our loan, we would need to supply the paperwork for mortgage loans, second mortgages, and line of credit loans. That goes for car and boat loans too.
• Our intentions. Aside from what we’re bequeathing to the heirs, we have made some charitable commitments that must be honored. They are in the will, but the heirs need to know.
• Social security accounts. They need to know, just so they can inform Social Security to stop the checks.
• Funeral arrangements. They need to know that we’ve purchased two plots in a green cemetery, and that one funeral home will know what to do.
• Contacts. All the people they might need to contact: our tax accountant, the attorney who drew up the wills, the investment advisers, potential pallbearers, family members, and close friends that should be notified.
• Subscriptions. Publication subscriptions go on forever until you tell them to stop. The same is true for software subscriptions.

PresentationMy wife envisions putting all the information, neatly arranged and clearly organized, into three spiral notebooks, one for each child and one for us to keep hand. Whenever information changes, as it surely will, we can change the relevant pages in the notebooks.

If you want a more elegant system, you can purchase a Nokbox™(Nok stands for next of kin) from a company called (you guessed it) Nokbox. The product, a carton and folders with pre-printed labels for every possible financial detail, starts at $159 and can range up to $299 for the fireproof box plus legal and estate plan folders. (Warning: If you go to the Nokbox site, in five minutes ads for Nokbox will begin appearing near the top of your Facebook feed.)

You can find more suggestions for death binders and materials to include in them on the Internet.

Do your heirs a favor: Prepare ahead of time. And in the meantime, watch out for that bus.

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There is a major disconnect between what older adults want from health care and what the health care system delivers to them.

That disconnect appears on every page of a new study by Age Wave and the John A. Hartford Foundation, titled Meeting the Growing Demand for Age-Friendly Care: Health Care at the Crossroads. When adults aged 65 and older were askedto assign a letter grade to the health care system, only 11% awarded it an A overall. It’s nothing personal – 40% give an A rating to their own health care providers – the problems are systemic.

Take, for example, the health condition that sparks the most fear. For nearly half of older adults, it’s Alzheimer’s or dementia. (Cancer is a distant second at 25%, and stroke and heart attack trail at 13% each.) Yet just 40% of older adults say their provider routinely evaluates their cognitive function. Even among patients ages 80 and older, the number rises only to 47%.

To Cure or To CareWhat the report makes clear is our so-called health care system (which in fact is a patchwork, jerry-rigged mishmash of private providers, state and federal governments, insurers and pharmaceutical companies) is set up in such a way that physicians have no incentive, and little training, to address what concerns older adults most.

The medical system rewards physicians who specialize. It offers few incentives for generalists who can look at the patient as a whole body or, dare we say it, a whole person. It rewards health care workers who treat diseases, especially chronic conditions. But what concerns older adults most is functional – being able to do the activities they enjoy. When asked what they see as the benefits of a long life, three-fourths of older adults answered, “enjoying more time with family and friends” and “continuing to do the activities I love.”

Perhaps physicians would better understand patients’ needs and desires if they had more time to spend with them. But the current system makes that a rare luxury. Doctors are under intense pressure to be efficient in an effort to contain medical expenses.

The complexity of the system is an issue for older patients. It’s no surprise that 56% agreed that “it is difficult and stressful to navigate the health care system,” while 62% said insurance plans offer too many options. More than one-third said dealing with the health care system “has become my part-time job.”

Pervasive AgeismLouise Aronson, a geriatrician and author of the book Elderhood, blames much of the disconnect on ageism, the pernicious attitude that identifies “old” as “other.” She sees it in medical education, where “education on care of older adults is too often negligible to very limited and distorted by prejudice.” This is despite the fact that older adults account for about 40% of hospital stays and up to one-third of outpatient visits. “Usually, medical education and health systems are responsive to demographics and epidemiology,” she writes, “but that’s not so when it comes to the needs of older patients.”

Ageism is also to blame, she says, for the fact that older adults were not included in drug trials for new medications. The National Institutes of Health recommended including women and minorities in research trials in 1986, added children in the 1990s, but didn’t recommend including older adults until 2019. As a result, older adults are prescribed medications whose effects on older patients have not been tested.

(For a simple yet comprehensive look at ageism in health care, check out this infographic.)

The health care system needs to offer more age-friendly care, says the Age Wave-Hartford Foundation report. It suggests that physicians should explore with their older patients what it calls the “4Ms Framework:” Medications, Mind, Mobility, and what Matters. One effort to promote such care is the Age-Friendly Collaborative, an effort to accelerate and spread the adoption of evidence-based, age-friendly care. Currently 5,000 care settings have been certified as age-friendly.

As Aronson observes, health care doesn’t have to be this way. Given the sheer number of older adults in the health care system today and the even greater numbers coming in the next three decades, we have the power to change the system by insisting on better, more age-appropriate treatment.

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No. 66/October 9, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Election Dilemmas – Medicare Gets Even More ComplicatedFrom the “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” Department: In 2025, out-of-pocket costs for drugs covered by Medicare are limited to $2,000 annually…

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From the time I was 12 years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to do in life. What a pity that I was wrong.

My ambition was to become a newspaper reporter in the footsteps of role models Mark Twain and Clark Kent. In single-minded pursuit of this goal, I worked on my school newspapers in junior high school, high school, and college. In high school I was a stringer for the local daily, earning the princely sum of 25-cents per column inch. I interned for daily newspapers for three summers during college. It all paid off when I landed a reporting job on a highly regarded daily in Florida. Three years later, my newspaper career was over. It turned out not to be a love match.

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I was thinking about the certainty of my youth as I read a recent book called Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, by Maggie Jackson. Her thesis is that when we are certain, we are likely to be wrong (as my own experience demonstrates). “Humans spend much of their time jumping to conclusions based on cognitive shortcuts honed from what has worked in the past,” she writes. In the interests of efficiency, or just impatience, we quickly go with certainty to an answer that we know is correct from experience. Taking that shortcut relieves us of the burden of thinking about the question again, or even of considering an alternative to our certainty.

Being uncertain, on the other hand, leaves our mind open to explore other alternatives, “propelling people in challenging times toward good judgment, flexibility, mutual understanding, and heights of creativity.” In fact, Jackson makes a case that “it is uncertainty that equips us to envision the unimaginable, adjust to the unexpected, value a question as deeply as an answer, and find strength in difference and in difficulty.”

Uncertain TimesIt’s helpful to know that uncertainty can be so valuable – especially since elderhood seems rife with it.

We leave the certainty of working for set hours, a regular paycheck, and the camaraderie of co-workers, only to step, like Wile E. Coyote on the cliff’s edge, into the abyss of what comes after work. Do we continue working part-time? Do we travel? Do we volunteer? Do we tend to the rose bushes? We may think we know the answer with certainty, and we may be right. Or not.

We do our best to be parents to our adult children, even as they make decisions that we find foolish, dangerous, or beyond our comprehension. Is there certainty in the role we should play? What is the best way to navigate the evolving, shifting relationships between parent and child?

We lose a parent, a partner, a child, a best friend. Relationships that were solid certainties in our lives disappear, leaving us with questions we never had to face before. How do we mourn? How do we continue to live?

We know for certain that we will age in place in our own homes. Are we ignoring the inevitable? By clinging to a fixed answer, are we missing an opportunity to enjoy a better life in a community?

The Wisdom of Not KnowingJackson offers the refreshing notion that uncertainty is, rather than something to fear, a positive place from which to make thoughtful decisions. “Most of thought and life itself is the pursuit of resolution,” she writes. “Yet along the way, it is uncertainty that equips us to envision the unimaginable, adjust to the unexpected, value a question as deeply as an answer, and find strength in difference and in difficulty.”

An ancient philosopher supports her position. Socrates is famous for saying, “All I know is that I know nothing.”

Uncertainty is also similar to what teachers of meditation and mindfulness call “beginner’s mind,” a mind that lets go of assumptions and sees everything as if it were for the first time. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the most prominent writers on mindfulness, writes that beginner’s mind “allows us to be receptive to new possibilities. It prevents us from getting stuck in the rut of our own expertise, which often thinks it knows more than it does.”

As older adults, we have enough experience – including the experience of living through momentous change – that we can afford to take a step back, acknowledge what we do not know, and carefully explore the many alternatives before us. Ironically, when we are older, it may be easier to adopt beginner’s mind - the child-like openness to wonder and possibility.

Perhaps Bob Dylan said it best. In a song about changing his viewpoint from seeing a world of good and evil to acknowledging shades of gray, he sang, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

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On Thursday, September 5, I received an email from Microsoft, stating: “Thanks for your order on September 4, 2024.” The billing statement showed that I had purchased Microsoft 365 Business Standard package for $450.00, marked up (for reasons unstated) to $492.08.

I do have Microsoft 365 on my computer, but not the business standard. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. And I was mad as hell about it.

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Scam Stoppers Notebook: Be suspicious of your “fight or flight” response. Phishing schemes rely on triggering that rush of adrenalin that inclines you to act immediately. If it feels urgent, breathe in and take a step back.The email continued with “Additional Resources” offering links for understanding the invoice, paying by wire transfer, and how to cancel the subscription.

Instinctively, I clicked the link to cancel the subscription.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: Don’t click on links in suspicious emails. Tip: To check a link, let your cursor hover over the link text until you can see the URL address the link is pointing to. If the URL is longer than your arm, step away.The link led me to a subscription cancellation form, which asked me to supply the usual information – name, mailing address, email address, phone.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: Do not provide any personal data, especially not bank account numbers, Social Security number, driver’s license number, etc. These become ammunition for identity theft.Once I filled out the form, however, there was no way to submit it.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: My IT guy thinks this is by design. The form’s real purpose is to install remote control software on my computer. If the submit button doesn’t do what I expect it to do, then I am more likely to contact the scammers by phone.Frustrated, I called the help number at the bottom of the form.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: For God’s sake, don’t pick up the phone! It’s a trap!The phone was answered by “Brad,” who had an Indian accent (Which I thought odd, but then considered that perhaps Microsoft outsources call centers overseas). I told Brad I did not order the product and wanted a refund. After running me through a few hurdles, he agreed that I should receive a refund, but first he had to let me talk to his supervisor.

While I was on hold, a thought occurred to me: I wonder whether this purchase has actually shown up on my bank statement. If it hasn’t, how can they give me a refund? I opened another screen and logged into my online banking. There was no charge from Microsoft.

Meanwhile the supervisor came on the line to explain that he was connecting to my computer to send me the refund. In the lower right corner of the screen, an icon of a remote connection program flashed briefly. Then the screen split: on the left, what appears to be a Microsoft log; on the right, my checking and savings account balances.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: DO NOT ever allow a stranger to remotely access your computer.Now I was certain that I was being scammed. I told the supervisor that I was done with this charade.

“Please do not disconnect your computer,” said the supervisor.

“I have just disconnected,” I replied.

“Why would you do that?” he shouted. “Why do you not do what I told you to do?”

“Who do you think you are?” I shouted back. I terminated the call.

I breathed a sigh of relief at how narrowly I had averted disaster. Another minute and they might have drained my bank accounts. Feeling foolish but lucky, I had a pleasant, carefree weekend.

On Monday morning, Paypal notified me of a suspicious charge on my account. I checked my account and there were actually two suspicious charges totaling $600.

Before I had time to lodge a dispute with Paypal, my bank texted me about two suspicious charges via Zelle. Then I received another inquiry about a suspicious charge on my credit card. I felt bombarded by air, land, and sea.

One by one, I disputed the charges and changed my passwords on all three services. Two hours later, I had put out all the fires. Or so I believed.

But on Wednesday, a regional bank officer called and suggested that my computer might be infected with malicious software. He strongly advised me to have an IT professional inspect it and clean it immediately. For the sake of security, he said, he was freezing my checking and savings accounts, and he advised me to open new accounts (with new passwords, of course) at a branch bank.

The next day my IT guy checked out the computer and found two remote access programs. Because both are legitimate programs and not malware, my anti-malware software didn’t detect them. Opening new accounts and changing passwords would not have protected me if the criminals could see what I was doing through the remote-control software. How they failed to empty my bank accounts is still a mystery.

Scam Stoppers Notebook: No legitimate organization will ever reach out to you directly, so ignore all emails, texts and calls purporting be Microsoft, Apple, the Post Office, Social Security, or your bank. If in doubt, reach out to them directly through known channels. If you can’t visit in person or call directly, just don’t. Trust your intuition and assume it is a scam.Sadder but wiser, I hope you can learn from my mistakes. Next time I react to a message with anger or urgency, I will stop and call someone and put my suspicious senses into high alert. Unfortunately, artificlal intelligence has made it much easier for criminals and much harder for their victims. So apply the new rules: Ignore all triggering emails.

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No. 65/September 25, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Most Retirees Are Okay FinanciallyDespite the persistent drumbeat of scary stories declaring that workers are not saving enough for a secure retirement, 86% in a Federal Reserve survey said th…

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At 7:45 a.m. there is a knock at the front door, just as there has been every weekday morning for five weeks. Still wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, I open the door to admit Chris and Matt, the carpenters remodeling our kitchen, a room which, coincidentally, has been unavailable to us for five weeks.

Today starts a little differently. They need to remove everything from our storage room so the floor can be swept and then painted. We work out that most of it can go to the basement, but the bright pink armoire that once occupied our daughter’s room will have to be moved into the dining room. The walls of that room are already cluttered with boxes of items liberated from the kitchen to serve our short-term needs, plus the garbage can and recycling bins. Oh well, the more the merrier. Happily, Chris and Matt do all the heavy lifting.

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Just as I get out of the shower, Eric texts that he will arrive at 8:30 a.m. for his annual window-cleaning service. I also receive a notice that BGE, our electrical and gas utility, will shut off all electricity to our building in 30 minutes.

Eric arrives but can’t find a place to park. Indeed, three trucks from BGE have arrived in our cul-de-sac. Just as I show Eric a legal parking space, my phone rings. “We need you to move your car,” explains the chair of our coop’s building committee. The BGE crew needs that space for today’s project. I get behind the wheel, but that’s as far as I get. The BGE trucks are now fully obstructing the street in all directions. Fifty feet ahead of me, another driver is trying to exit. We sit. We wait. Finally one of the BGE trucks backs up enough to clear our obstructed artery, and I put the car in gear and search for a new place to park.

Back indoors, the power shuts down promptly at 9 a.m. The carpenters can’t do much without power tools, and I can’t do much without my desktop computer. After wandering the house aimlessly for an hour, I realize there is enough sunlight coming through the window for reading a book.

Bad News From the BankMy cellphone rings again. A regional bank officer who specializes in fraud prevention is following up on an incident I reported earlier in the week (that’s another story). I thought changing all my passwords had resolved the problem. Not so. He suspects the fraudsters have infected my computer with malicious software. Therefore, our checking and savings accounts are frozen, and I must go to our local branch to open new ones. Immediately. Oh, and clean up the computer. Once it’s free of suspicious malware, the accounts will be unfrozen.

The electricity comes back on at 11:10 a.m. Eric has finished the windows. The power tools are all a-buzzing. I call my local branch and make an appointment for 3 p.m., giving me time to catch up on all the work I missed during the outage.

But that 3 p.m. appointment, it turns out, was a less-than-brilliant idea. Next door to the branch bank sits an elementary/middle school whose students stream out en masse at 3 p.m. Traffic is backed up for two blocks as parents illegally double-park, awaiting their children (many of whom insist on taking their sweet time leaving the school building).

Fortunately, I think, I have an ace in the hole: I know that the bank maintains a small parking lot for its customers only. I inch forward, waiting for my opportunity to turn into the lot, and… Wrong! Barricades block the entrance, because of course the lot is being resurfaced.

I continue inching forward, past the bank. Two hundred yards farther, I find an empty spot to park. I hustle back on foot, arriving for my appointment only five minutes late. There, a well organized and efficient customer service rep gets me squared away with new account numbers, papers to sign, and clear instructions on what to do next.

In celebration, I reward myself with a strawberry lemonade at Starbucks, and return home where construction noises have ceased, the electricity is on, and life has returned to placidly normal.

What It All MeansTwo quick observations:

1. In the distant past, handling this many obstacles would shoot my nervous system into the red zone. This time, it didn’t. I credit the difference to better resilience. Resilience is aging’s silver lining. If you’re still standing, after all life has thrown at you, then you must, by definition, be resilient. Thanks to my years of experience in absorbing shocks, days like this result not in a meltdown, but in an amusing story to tell.

2. At times during my career, these kinds of chaotic, fast-moving, stress-inducing days were common. In some jobs they were the norm. The rarity of days like this in my current life remind me why it was a great idea to stop working full-time.

Here is wishing you fewer days of chaos and confusion and, when they do occur, the resiliency to sail through them, no worse for wear and tear.

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My heartfelt thanks to the New York Times for bringing to my attention one more damned health condition to worry about in my dotage. As if weakening eyesight, questionable hearing, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and receding gums weren’t enough.

To these I now must add a condition known as “dead butt syndrome.” It typically affects people who spend hours at a time sitting. People like me, in other words. A lifelong writer who has always preferred to type in a sitting posture, I am a poster child for a person at risk.

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It is small consolation that dead butt syndrome can also impact “rotational athletes” – those whose sports involve rotating the body to swing. Think tennis, pickleball, baseball, and golf. But the sedentary are the more likely victims.

What’s in a NameThe medical name for this condition is “gluteal amnesia,” which translates more accurately to “forgetful ass.” I have been called worse. But in our attention economy, where a click is worth a thousand words and 1,000 clicks may kick off your career as an influencer, “dead butt syndrome” attracts more eyeballs than Greek words.

The silly, semi-prurient name notwithstanding, physical therapists assure us that dead butt syndrome is a serious condition that can lead to dire physical consequences. They say it can lay the groundwork for such health risks as depression and cardiovascular disease.

The problem starts when a muscle in the buttocks (gluteus medius specifically) grows weak from inactivity – so weak that it “forgets” to activate when it should. The job of this muscle, along with its siblings g. maximus and g. minimis, is to stabilize the hip, lift the legs, rotate the thighs, and keep the pelvis and core stable. When one or more of the glute triplets falls down on the job, other muscles and joints strain to compensate. Result: low back pain, knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain, and possibly balance issues.

“Our bodies aren’t designed to be seated for long periods of time,” says Kristen Schuyten, D.P.T., a physical therapy clinical specialist at Michigan Medicine. If you sit for hours a day, she adds, it’s going to lead to issues.” She also notes that it takes nearly twice as long to restore weak glutes than it does to develop the condition.

How To KnowHow do you know if you have dead butt syndrome? One warning sign is if, after a few hours of sitting, you stand and feel numbness (or a pain) in your backside. Another test is to lie on your back with hips in the air (i.e., the bridge pose in yoga). If you consciously engage your buttocks five or ten times and they burn a little, you’re in the clear, but if you feel major strain in your hamstrings, your glutes are probably not firing. The curvature of the spine can also indicate that the hip flexors are overcompensating.

Physical therapists can also administer the Trendelenburg test, in which a patient lifts one leg in front of them while standing. If the pelvis dips down on the side of the body on which the leg is lifted, that suggests the gluteus medius is weak on the opposite side.

For those sedentary souls like me who are in the high-risk group for dead butt, the standard advice is what you’ve heard all your life: Get up from your chair frequently. Stretch every day, even when you don’t need to. Sit up straight and maintain good posture. Buy a standing desk.

There are also great exercises you can do to prevent the dread condition, or to correct it once you have it. I won’t bore you with them now, but you can click here if you want to see illustrated instructions.

Despite my risky behavior, I seem to have escaped the ravages of dead butt syndrome so far. It’s certainly not a condition I want my name associated with. So I will be carefully modulating my sitting time with frequent breaks for snacking, walking about the neighborhood, and possibly – just maybe – getting more exercise.

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No. 64/September 11, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Maybe You Don’t Need That StatinMore than 92 million Americans take statin drugs to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Doctors who prescribe them follow guideline…

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My memory has a negative bias. Maybe your memory isn’t wired this way, but whenever I have occasion to look back at my life, I find it easy to recall my failures and hard to recall any successes. Looking across the broad expanse of my life, my first impression is a series of stumbles, meanders, and random events. No pattern or consistent theme is readily apparent.

The retrospective view happens to be top of mind because my wife and I are approaching a major milestone event in our relationship, and we wanted to use the occasion to share with our children and friends a sense of what our lives together have been all about. While we were thinking about ways we could do that, I came across a tool that might be just the ticket. It’s called “life review.”

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“Life review” actually has two meanings. One is that phenomenon described by people who have had near-death experiences, when their whole life flashes before their eyes in an instant. That is not the one I’m describing.

The other meaning is a process for trying to make sense of one’s life. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates declared while nearing his own death experience. A life review, as psychologist Bonnie Kellen puts it, is “an examination of one’s life with the benefit of hindsight.” Psychologists have been using life review as a therapeutic tool since the 1960s, especially with older adults.

For me, it sounds like a good way to recall more positives to give them at least equal play with the negatives, and maybe even to render a lifetime of stumbles and meandering into a life that has a consistent narrative and consistent purpose.

How It WorksTypically, a life review exercise involves several sessions with a facilitator, one-on-one or in a group. The facilitator asks questions that hopefully prompt participants to explore events of their childhood, teen years, and later stages of life. It’s also possible to do a life review individually using a workbook or manual with dozens of prompts to promote reflection.

One popular variation on the life review is guided autobiography. Instead of recalling events chronologically, weekly sessions are organized by themes – family, money, work, health, etc. Participants write brief autobiographical vignettes and share them aloud with the group.

Dr. Robert Butler, who first coined the term life review, saw assessing one’s life in retrospect as a normal part of aging. Therapists who have conducted life review exercises with older adults report that the sessions reduce depression and anxiety and increase life satisfaction. More recently, studies are finding that other age groups can also benefit.

The benefits, according to psychologists, include these:

• Accepting the past. By seeing old disappointments from a different perspective, you may be able to accept them as events that had an unexpected impact on your life but made you who you are.
• Forgiveness. Old grudges and disputes, on close inspection, may not be worth the pain and estrangement they have caused. Reflection may lead to forgiveness, of others and of yourself, and thereby promote healing. (Another benefit therapists report is better interpersonal relationships.)
• New purpose. By finding the common themes that connect the dots of your life’s journey, you may gain clarity about how you want to live your life going forward.
• Dopamine. Reminiscing about positive events in your past can trigger the release of endorphins and dopamine, brain chemicals that promote feelings of happiness and satisfaction.

Going It AloneIf you decide to conduct a life review on your own, you might benefit from downloading Life Review Workbook by Carolyn E. Cooper. Among the questions she asks you to reflect upon are these:

• What would you regret most not achieving in your life?
• Who are the most important people in your life?
• What relationships need repair?
• What gives you energy?
• If your house were on fire, what three things would you save (after yourself and your loved ones?

For our part, my wife and I want to weave a narrative that demonstrates that our 50 years of missteps and meandering in the desert were actually consistent with our purpose and our values. In other words, we knew where we were going all along.

That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

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My wife and I have been talking about how to handle our final resting places. Not with our friends, of course. The surest way to clear a crowded room instantly is to talk about death. The subject makes most people a bit twitchy.

My siblings and I had that exact reaction when our mother sat the four of us down and demanded that we divide her possessions among us, now, because she didn’t want any bickering or blows when the time came. We said it was premature to talk about her death, and what a morbid conversation, and how awkward this felt. Bottom line: We resisted, she insisted, we complied. In retrospect, she was totally right. Given that her last years were spent in an Alzheimer’s fog, it was good she forced the issue when she did.

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Though we may deny being superstitious, many of us have a lingering fear that talking about death just encourages it to come knocking. My view is that we’re all going to die whether we talk about it or not. It seems more compassionate toward one’s heirs to work out the arrangements ahead of time. It’s one less decision for them to make during the whirlwind of confusion, grief, and sometimes relief that overwhelms them when a family member shuffles off their mortal coil.

Consider the OptionsWith this in mind, my wife and I researched the options. One choice was the one my parents chose – donating their bodies to science. My father’s rationale was that medical schools needed bodies for research and practice, but I suspect his stronger motivation was to spare the family funeral expenses.

Cremation is popular for the same reason – no expensive coffin, no floral arrangements, no burial fee. And if you’re concerned about where to bury 7 billion humans, nothing says compact like an urn full of ashes. But millions of members of our tribe ended up in crematory ovens not that long ago, so we were squeamish about voluntarily tossing our remains in an oven. Also, from an environmental standpoint, studies estimate that one cremation uses as much gas and electricity as a 500-mile automobile journey and releases around 250 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

That brought us back to a traditional burial, in a pleasant green cemetery where our children and grandchildren could visit and gaze at our headstones and tell us how much they missed us, as if we could hear. Nothing wrong with that option, except for the fact that:

.Our bodies might be embalmed with toxic chemicals that don’t mix well with natural processes.

.We might be placed in a varnished, highly decorative casket that won’t decompose easily.

.Our graves will be encased in concrete. This is standard practice in cemeteries and seems to be a way to keep caskets from sinking further into the ground. But it’s not environmentally sustainable, and it defeats the purpose of dust returning to dust.

Green BurialBut this year we learned of another alternative called Green Burial, which seeks to make burials environmentally sound. The idea is to allow human remains to return to the earth in their natural state, where they decompose naturally. In green burials, bodies are not embalmed, no concrete or other material is used for the grave, and the casket or urn or shroud is made of natural, biodegradable materials. Graves are dug by hand, without the aid of gas-powered digging machinery. Instead of vertical headstones or stone mausoleums, the headstones are simple, minimally invasive, composed of natural materials (stone), and placed flush with the ground.

My wife and I took a tour of a new “natural burial” cemetery in our area. The cemetery, by design, is surrounded by acres of forests and meadows that the cemetery developers donated to the county for preservation. The cemetery acreage did not resemble cemeteries we are accustomed to visit. It was not a manicured lawn peppered with stone monuments of various sizes. Rather, it looks like what it is: a natural meadow.

We were sold. We promptly paid for two plots at the top of a hill, overlooking an inspiring panorama of forest and fields. We don’t expect to enjoy the view, but we hope our descendants will.

Hopefully our descendants will also appreciate our foresight in taking one difficult decision off the table for them. The important point is not which option you select, but the value of making a selection now, while it is firmly in your own hands. In the days after you breathe your last, your descendants will have more than enough to worry about between planning the funeral, finding your will, and tracking down your insurance policies, financial statements, bank accounts, and all that. Make it easier on them. Divide up the heirlooms, work out your body’s final destination, and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing you can take your final bow with a clean slate.

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No. 63/August 28, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Aging Occurs in Great Leaps A study published this year has found that humans age – at the molecular level – in two great bursts, one at age 44 and a second one at age 60. Scientis…

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As a former vice president of the United States once remarked to the United Negro College Fund, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." For many years, the conventional wisdom was that, with rare exceptions, losing one’s mind was an inevitable part of aging. An inability to recall names, or proper nouns, or any nouns, can certainly fuel the fear that the loss is under way.

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Now the current thinking is that we may lose one sort of intelligence as we age but gain another. There is fluid intelligence, which enables you to learn, assess, solve problems, adapt to the world, and yell out the correct answers while watching Jeopardy. It is the ability to reason, to create, and to remember. Fluid intelligence is what allows children to soak up information like sponges. It increases through the teen years, then slowly declines.

Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, increases with age. It is information you’ve learned and stored in long-term memory. Crystallized intelligence is practical know-how, general knowledge, and wisdom, gleaned from experience and applied as needed.

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Today I want to focus on fluid intelligence, and particularly on fluids that can feed it or impede it.

CaffeineGood news for coffee and tea fans! Two different studies presented at this year’s Alzheimer's Association International Conference reported links between caffeine intake and long-term cognitive benefits. In one, people who drank two or more cups of coffee daily had a 28% lower risk of dementia than people drinking less than a cup daily. The same study found that people drinking up to two cups of tea daily had a lower risk of dementia than those who drank no tea at all. For those who drank the most caffeine, dementia risk decreased by 38%.

The second study found that daily coffee and tea intake could predict the rate of decline in fluid intelligence. The decline was slower among older adults who drank one to three cups of coffee per day and those who didn’t drink coffee. However, the rate of decline was faster among those who had more than four cups per day. For tea drinkers, one to three cups a day was a slower decline than among both those who had more than four cups and those who drank no tea at all. In either case, three cups a day seems to be the golden mean, four cups the law of diminishing returns. The results support the hypothesis that both coffee and tea intake protect the brain against cognitive decline.

AlcoholThe news about alcohol is not so rosy. There has long been a theory, popular among the drinking classes, that drinking in moderation offers some protection against developing dementia. Scientists now think the studies suggesting this protection were flawed, and will go so far as to say that the links between moderate drinking and dementia prevention are “not conclusive.” What is conclusive is that excessive drinking does increase the risk of developing dementia.

Now, a study published last year by the BrightFocus Foundation’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research program strongly suggests that even moderate drinking may accelerate the progression of Alzheimer’s. The study gave mice a choice between water and alcohol over a 10-week period to see whether voluntary, moderate, but chronic drinking impacted the pathways associated with Alzheimer’s. It did. The alcohol increased brain atrophy and caused more amyloid plaques to form. The researchers postulate that alcohol may accelerate the loss of neurons and the connections between them.

The findings may not qualify as a call for abstinence, but they do suggest caution. “If you have a healthy brain that can clear ethanol [the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages] and your consumption is minimal, maybe drinking has little impact,” says Shannon L. Macauley, the study team leader and assistant professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. “As we hit middle age, however, our metabolism changes, and alcohol may be something to avoid.”

Another long-standing belief is that moderate drinking is good for the heart and maybe the digestion. But a study tracking 135,000 adults aged 60 and older for 12 years found no reduction in heart disease deaths among light or moderate drinkers when compared with occasional drinkers. Light drinking was defined as up to 20 grams daily for men and 10 grams daily for women. A standard drink in the U.S. is 14 grams.

But it gets worse. Even light drinking was associated with an increase in cancer deaths among older adults. Dr. Rosario Ortola, the lead author of the study, said alcohol probably raises the risk of cancer “from the first drop.”

In other words, if you’re concerned about maintaining your fluid intelligence, apply your fluids intelligence wisely.

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Earlier this summer a tropical depression visited my hometown, and another kind of depression visited me. Spoiler alert: I’m over it now. When depression has me in its grip, it is not possible to write. It is not even possible to lift a pencil. I have no energy, no motivation, no hope.

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But first, let me set the scene. Most of the time, I enjoy a peaceful, pleasant existence characterized by regular habits. I awaken at the same time each day, perform daily rituals of meditation and exercise and affirmations, eat breakfast, work at my computer until lunch, take a power nap, work until dinner. Regular routines give me an illusion of control and stability. Routines allow me to move forward with minimal thought, freeing up real estate in my brain for more creative pursuits.

The Eve of DisruptionMy patient and long-suffering wife decided that 15 years is long enough to live with a dysfunctional galley kitchen. After months of working through designs with architects and selecting a contractor, it became time in July to box up and move everything out of the kitchen in preparation for the remodeling. In terms of logistics, this was good and necessary planning. But psychologically, it upended my regular, dependable habits and replaced them with chaos and confusion. Where were the glasses? Where did the spices go? Where can I find the silverware? The measuring spoons? Which box has the peanut butter? Every step of every routine was now preceded by trying to remember where the familiar had gone and rooting around in boxes.

I had no time to work out alternative routines, because we then took a week of vacation with the kids and grandkids. Wonderful time, but also another disruption from routine.

Then we returned from vacation just in time for a freak weather event to down the power lines. For 24 hours we did what we could in natural light, ate meals elsewhere, and compiled short lists of friends we could mooch on. Then the lights came back on.

And the next day, the crew arrived to demolish and reconstruct our kitchen, thus kicking off a span of up to 12 weeks sans kitchen.

The weather was no help. Under overcast skies with humidity hovering around 90 percent, it was hard to breathe, hard to sleep, hard to think. Every footstep was an existential struggle against gravity.

I struggled to get words onto paper, and then I struggled to make them even slightly readable. I had no new ideas for things to write about. I was certain that I would never have another new idea because I was all used up. Plus my lower back was in pain. I was having trouble sitting down or getting up again, and I couldn’t bend at the waist. In sum, I felt old, tired, ailing, and hopeless.

And then without warning, late last week, the depression lifted. The clouds parted, the sun shone brightly. My back was mended – isn’t it amazing when that happens! – my every footstep had purpose. I found my resilience muscles and got into the swing of adjusting to the new abnormal. And voila! words started to flow from my keyboard.

Depression and AgeI am not sure why I am telling this story. In part, I think, I want to reassure my fellow depression sufferers that the darkness does end. It comes in like ocean waves, and it recedes like the outgoing tide (just not on as dependable a schedule). For that fortunate majority who are not afflicted with depression, I hope the story is useful to give a sense of how debilitating it can be – even if to the untrained eye, we seem to be perfectly fine.

But I also wanted to note that depression and aging can be a dangerous combination. In the general U.S population, 29% have been diagnosed with depression at some point and about 18% say they are experiencing it now. Both numbers shot upward during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the older adult populations, the incidence of depression is lower: Up to 5% for people living in their community, but 13.5% for those who require home healthcare and 11.5% for hospitalized patients. It is more prevalent in those who have other chronic health conditions. Despite the comparatively lower rates, depression poses tragic risks. Although adults age 65 and older are 17% of the population, they account for 22% of suicides. Because of their life experience, older adults who attempt suicide have a high rate of success. Given these facts, it is important to be alert to warning symptoms of depression.

What causes depression, and what makes it disappear? Doctors today say it’s an imbalance in brain chemistry. Then again, doctors used to think it was an imbalance among the four humours. You can believe what you want. I have enough belief in the brain chemistry explanation to be in my third decade on antidepressants, though I suspect barometric pressure is also an uncredited influence. I am fortunate that my treatment keeps my depressive episodes to a minimum. Still, even the best drugs are not enough to hold back the occasional cascade of negative thoughts that gather into a black cloud and darken my inner and outer worlds.

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No. 62/August 14, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

How to Make Retirement Savings More SecureOn the 50th anniversary of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), retirement writer Mark Miller asked policy experts how to improve …

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As the number of older adults in the U.S. continues to rise steadily, much like the sea levels, you may be happy to learn that someone in Washington wants to do something about it.

A consortium of 16 federal agencies and departments (an impressive achievement in itself!) plus three private foundations have issued a report called Aging in the United States: A Strategic Framework for a National Plan on Aging.

Note that this is not a national plan. It is merely the framework for a plan. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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But the report is still significant, because it tries to look at the issues facing older adults in a holistic fashion. The number of federal agencies collaborating on the report is an accurate indicator of just how fragmented and piecemeal current approaches are.

The report was authorized by Congress in 2020 when it passed an updated Older Americans Act. The project did not receive funding, however, until fiscal year 2023.

And while it is not a plan, the report attempts to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive national plan to address the varied needs of older adults, who will comprise 22% of the U.S. population by 2035 (up from 17% today).

PrioritiesThe report identifies needs in four main priority areas:

1. Age-Friendly Communities: Everyone benefits by living in places designed to encourage their physical health, mental health, well-being, and engagement. Age-friendly communities also mean places where older adults feel safe. The report notes that many organizations, including state departments of aging, are working toward related goals such as employment, financial security, transportation, volunteer opportunities, and social connections.

2. Coordinated Housing and Supportive Services: One in six older adults spends more than 50% of their income on housing. Despite numerous federal affordable housing programs for older adults, many cannot find and/or maintain affordable, accessible, and quality housing. Addressing the problem will require coordination across federal, state, and local government agencies and public and private partnerships to ensure more streamlined access to housing and services.

3. Increased Access to Long-Term Services and Supports: Most Americans underestimate their risk for developing a disability and needing long-term services and supports. For those who turned 65 in 2022, the chances are about 50-50, and 22% will have a disability requiring care for five years or longer. These older adults and their family caregivers need easy access to affordable, high-quality services and supports. Unfortunately, today more than three-quarters of Home and Community Based Services providers turn down referrals because they are unable to hire and retain staff. These pressures, in turn, affect family caregivers who must take on even more – and ever more complex – caregiving responsibilities. Older adults and their caregivers also often serve as their own care navigators, lost in a disjointed network of programs and services.

4. Aligned Health Care and Supportive Services: A fragmented health care system has insufficient alignment between and across various providers to share relevant information, facilitate access to needed services, and coordinate care across delivery settings. Although the United States spends more on health care than any other developed country, this investment does not always deliver positive health outcomes for older adults.

The next step is to trot the report around for a series of listening sessions in Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Texas to get reactions and suggestions from older adults and caregivers. “We want everybody to kick the tires on this strategic framework to see what they think,” said Lindsay Goldman, CEO at Grantmakers in Aging, in an interview with Next Avenue.

In addition, there’s an online survey about aging in America, accessible here with a September 15 deadline for responses.

Meanwhile the Older Americans Act requires states to create and implement statewide plans for aging, and 24 states are developing their own master plans or “multisector plans.”

Who’s Paying?Aye, there’s the rub.

No one expects the lofty goals of the strategic framework or a subsequent national plan to be achieved by osmosis. Money is the catalyst, and that is in the hands of Congress. In the current Congress, deadlocked and divided, funding for aging initiatives stands little to no chance. What Congress looks like after the November elections may indicate the likelihood of the plan going forward.

The report’s creators hope to generate momentum for a 2025 White House Conference on Aging. Whether that happens is also a political question.

The creators of the report intend “to spark dialogue and consideration” at all government levels about “how we can leverage our collective strengths across the private and public sectors to make our inclusive vision for aging in America a reality.” Out of that discussion, they hope “to build a national movement that inspires tangible actions and makes a difference.”

Now wouldn’t that be something!

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[Note to subscribers: While I am on a brief vacation, I am reposting a past column. Don’t worry: the summer rerun season at The EndGame is brief.]

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When Bob and I walk together around the neighborhood, meeting our minimum daily requirements for steps, we always compare notes on how we’re faring against the slow, inexorable advance of decrepitude. We each do our “organ recitals,” and then Bob asks the tough question: What’s normal aging and what’s something to worry about?

Today I am attempting to answer Bob’s question. I’ve compiled information from the most authoritative sources on the internet – carefully reviewed by my friend Dr. Carla Rosenthal, an experienced geriatrician - and I’ve separated out normal signs of aging from symptoms that may signal serious health concerns. (Trigger warning: if you are a person, like me, who reads about lung disease and immediately feel short of breath, maybe you should stop reading.) Remember that the list of “normal” events isn’t a prediction; it’s only what happens to many people as they age. You, on the other hand, may have won the genetic lottery and get to take a pass on several of these.

I hope you find this information reassuring that many of these events happen normally and are not cause for alarm.

Executive Summary:Whatever you had at 30, you have less of it now and will have still less going forward.That said, let’s look at the details.

Bones

Normal: Bones lose mass (osteopenia), making fractures a higher risk. The losses are speediest in post-menopausal women. You may find yourself a few centimeters shorter.

Worrisome: Hip and wrist fractures are more likely if osteopenia progresses to osteoporosis, or loss of bone density,

Joints

Normal: You are less flexible, and your joints feel stiff and tight. You feel a kinship with the Tin Man.

Worrisome: Joints become inflamed and arthritic.

Muscle and Fat

Normal: Muscle mass and muscle strength tend to decrease, but not enough to prevent you from performing normal tasks. As the percentage of body fat doubles by age 75, body shape changes. (Like the baggage in the overhead rack, “Items may have shifted during flight.”)

Worrisome: If the increased fat percentage triggers diabetes or other conditions.

Eyes

Normal: You have trouble reading things up close, or in dim light. You may perceive colors differently. Your eyes feel dry.

Worrisome: You see blurry spot near the center of your field of vision (age-related macular degeneration), cloudy vision (cataracts), or experience any sudden change in vision.

Ears

Normal: Everyone who speaks to you mumbles and you can’t catch all the words. You have trouble hearing in loud environments or over background noise.

Worrisome: You can’t hear most conversations clearly, or what you hear sounds muffled.

Mouth and Nose

Normal: Your senses of smell and taste diminish. Some foods taste bitter, others bland.

Worrisome: You lose interest in eating.

Brain

Normal: Learning takes longer. You draw a blank on a person’s name. You enter a room and forget why you came. You forget where you left your car keys.

Worrisome: You forget that you need keys to drive your car.

Heart

Normal: Your heart doesn’t speed up as quickly or pump as fast as when you were younger.

Worrisome: You have trouble keeping up with regular activities, feel short of breath, feel dizzy or lightheaded, have chest pain when you’re active, or have an irregular or fluttering heartbeat.

Lungs

Normal: You may have more difficulty exercising or breathing at high altitudes.

Worrisome: You experience sudden breathing difficulty.

Digestive System

Normal: You may become lactose intolerant, your metabolism slows, and you may experience constipation. You may have more difficulty swallowing.

Worrisome: You have reflux frequently or inflammation in the colon.

Kidneys and Urinary Tract

Normal: You’re peeing more often, sometimes with greater urgency.

Worrisome: You’re leaking urine before and after you pee.

Reproductive Organs

Normal: Men feel lower sex drive and may have full or partial erectile dysfunction. Women after menopause may feel dryness or itching in the vagina.

Worrisome: You contract a sexually transmitted infection.

Skin

Normal: Your skin wrinkles, dries out, becomes less elastic, and develops age spots. You develop more jowls around your jaw and more hollows around your eyes.

Worrisome: Spots triggered by sun exposure may be malignant.

Teeth and Gums

Normal: Your mouth is dry, your gums begin to recede, and cavities are more likely.

Worrisome: Diseased gums or teeth may be linked to diabetes and heart disease.

Sleep

Normal: Your sleep is interrupted more; you have trouble staying asleep. Your existing tendencies, whether to rise early or stay up late, become even more so.

Worrisome: Not getting enough sleep consistently.

What Can You Do?

You’ve heard it all before, but it’s still true: Eat a balanced diet heavy on the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; go easy on the dairy, sugar, fried foods, and alcohol. Keep moving. Exercise your body. Exercise your mind. Drink plenty of water. Get all the sleep you need. Reduce stress. Stay current on vaccinations. Use sunscreen religiously. Brush and floss teeth daily.

And keep smiling. Aging may be a bitch, but it still beats the alternative.

Admittedly, this was a whirlwind tour of a complex human system. Here are links for more information:

“The Aging Process: Signs, Effects, and What to Expect as You Get Older,” Greatseniorliving.com

“Changes in the Body with Aging,” MSD Manual Consumer Version

“Aging: What to Expect,” Mayo Clinic

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What if I told you that you have access to a free miracle drug that can lower your risk of heart attack, lower your glucose level, reduce the inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis, relieve tension, improve cognitive function, and lengthen your lifespan? Would you be interested? Would you believe me?

It’s true! I kid you not.

This wonder drug is laughter. Big honking obnoxious laughter. Quiet giggling laughter. Uninhibited throw-your-head-back-and-roar laughter.

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This miracle drug doesn’t get lots of attention in the medical press or the popular press – perhaps because pharmacies and doctors can’t make money on it – but scientific studies confirm that laughter has a variety of beneficial effects on our minds and bodies. Also, notes Natalie Dattilo, of Harvard Medical School’s Psychiatry Department, laughter has no side effects and no contraindications.

Medical science began paying serious attention to laughter only in recent decades, after a prominent editor told how laughter cured him of a debilitating illness. Norman Cousins, for 30 years the editor of the Saturday Review, was struck down in 1964 by a painful, crippling connective tissue disease. Doctors told him he had a 1-in-500 chance of a full recovery. Cousins and his doctor battled back with a unique treatment plan involving massive infusions of Vitamin C, paired with massive infusions of laughter. Cousins watched the TV show Candid Camera, the anarchic antics of the Marx Brothers, and other comic films. He discovered that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughs resulted in hours of pain-free sleep. In 1979 his experience with “laughter therapy,” published as Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, became a best-seller and spurred research into laughter’s effects.

Long-Term and Short-Term BenefitsWhat research has uncovered also reinforces findings on the mind-body connection. Laughter triggers the brain to produce chemicals that can cause a wide range of physiological changes.

Laughter has both short-term and long-term effects.

An immediate effect is greater intake of oxygen-rich air, which stimulates the heart, the lungs, and the muscles while causing the brain to release more endorphins. Laughter also acts like turning a computer off, then on – it releases a buildup of stress in the body, lowering the heart rate and blood pressure. It can also stimulate circulation and relax muscles that have tightened with stress.

Over the long term, laughter relieves pain by causing the body to produce its own natural painkillers. It can strengthen your immune system, which can be weakened by negative thoughts. Positive thoughts release neuropeptides that help fight stress and other potentially serious illnesses. Laughter can improve your ability to cope with difficult situations. Perhaps most important, it can lessen depression and anxiety and improve your mood.

On a personal note: In the years when I was working, I consistently tried to bring laughter and lightness to the workplace. Work, it seemed to me, was hard enough and pressured enough without having to be uptight about it too. When pressures ratcheted up and deadlines loomed, I was fond of telling others, “Just click your heels three times and say, ‘It’s only a soap opera.’” I like to think my co-workers appreciated this contribution and enjoyed working with me because of it. On the other hand, I once blew a job interview for a senior position because I said one of my most important leadership principles was fun. “Fun?” said the executive to whom I would have reported. “Fun has nothing to do with work!” Looking back, I feel fortunate I never had to work for that schmuck.

Where To Find FunnyIf you’re not in a laughing mood and need a tickle to your funny bone, we are blessed to live in an age when a vast storehouse of comedic stimuli is available at our fingertips. It’s called YouTube. If you search it for “comedy” or similar terms, you can sample funny movie scenes, tv sitcoms, and performances by standup comedians. Among the last, I strongly recommend Robin Williams and Sindhu Vee. Also, in the spirit of Norman Cousins, I am highly partial to any of the Marx Brothers repertoire. And the movie A Fish Called Wanda left me ROTFLMAO. Literally.

Also, seeing the world at a grandchild’s eye level is a delightful way to gain a fresh outlook on life, one guaranteed to be more fun and laughter-filled than the adult viewpoint.

So if you want to live with less pain and more pep, for more years, keep this scientific finding in mind: He who laughs best laughs last.

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Marsha’s mother took to assisted living with the same enthusiasm she brought to all aspects of her life. She joined the book club, attended concerts, and made friends in the dining room. But Marsha noticed on recent visits that her mother is suddenly withdrawn. She avoids the same activities she once enjoyed. Is she having a health problem she won’t talk about, Marsha wonders, or is she depressed?

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There’s another possibility to consider: Marsha’s mother may be the target of a bully in her community. Bullying is a serious problem in places where older adults gather.

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Psychology researchers have turned more attention to bullying in the past two decades, partly in response to a spate of school shootings, some of them perpetrated by students who had been targeted by bullies. Most of the attention, not surprisingly, has focused on bullying among children and adolescents.

But bullying remains a problem as people age. An AARP survey in 2015 estimated between 10% and 20% of adults in senior living communities are targets of bullying; the low number is reported incidents, while the higher figure adds an estimate of unreported incidents. Many adults don’t report for fear of reprisals.

Why Here? Why Now?Bullying is particularly prevalent in places where seniors gather for several reasons. Bullying behavior is usually about gaining control over others. Some adults have difficulty with the transition from living independently in their own home to requiring more care in a group setting. They feel out of control and powerless; taking their frustrations out on others is an attempt to regain a sense of control. It’s also true that most older adults have not experienced communal living in many years, if ever, and they may be rusty on the rules of common courtesy. It’s not unusual, for example, for an adult to claim a piece of common space as their own private turf.

One other factor affecting bullying of older adults is cognitive decline. Dementia strips a person of the filters and impulse control that made them polite and sociable, and for some the result is uncivil words and behaviors.

Those special factors aside, most bullies in senior living communities are the same people who were bullies in their youth – the ones who terrorized the timid and the “abnormal” and passed judgment on who was cool and who was not. Their bullying tactics haven’t changed much since high school. Verbal abuse, which is the form of bullying most seniors report, includes name-calling, insults, threats, and pointed jokes. Targets might be mimicked, shunned, or made the subject of rumors. Older versions of “mean girls” ostracize targets during meals or activities and form exclusive social cliques. Physical bullying is rare, but does happen in the form of pushing, biting, and hair-pulling.

Interestingly enough, studies show that men and women are equally likely to be bullies, as well as equally likely to be the targets of bullying.

Likely TargetsThose at more risk of being targeted tend to be new to the community, vulnerable-looking, quiet and passive, without a support network nearby, heavily dependent on others, or perceived as “different” from the norm in some way.

Bullying is not harmless, and certainly not victimless. Adults targeted by bullies can experience physical and emotional damage, including anxiety, depression, and a diminished quality of life. They may feel rejected, isolated, and insecure. Bullying may also worsen a target’s existing health condition and hasten their decline.

But targeted individuals are not the only ones who suffer. If bullying is not addressed, it can create a climate of fear that affects the entire community. Bystanders will hesitate to intervene out of fear that bullies may target them next. Community members may lose trust that staff will protect their own personal safety.

What You Can DoThere are a few things individuals who are targeted can do for themselves. They can report the incidents. They can stand up to bullies and defend their rights. They can seek out allies among their peers. They can take courses to build their self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

But the burden of responsibility for standing up to bullying rests squarely on the staff of senior residences and centers. Ignoring or tolerating bullying incidents places the entire community’s well-being at risk. Facilities that want to maintain a positive living environment for all need to have clear rules and expectations for older adult and staff behavior. Staff members should be trained to recognize and respond to bullying, and administrators must take reports of bullying seriously – by acting on them promptly and by providing emotional support to the targets of bullying.

If a parent or loved one in a senior setting has had a sudden change of behavior – avoiding events and activities, taking roundabout routes to go to and from common areas, isolating themselves – a bully or a climate of bullying may be the trigger, and worth looking into.

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No. 61/July 17, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers

1 in 20 Adults Experience Both Chronic Pain and Anxiety/DepressionA study from the Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center at University of Arizona Health Sciences have made the first determination o…

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Be honest: Do you cringe when someone calls you old? Do you apply cosmetics to camouflage wrinkles and other signs of aging? Do you hate that gray and try to wash it away?

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If so, you’re in excellent company. We know intellectually that we have every right to be proud of our years of hard-won experience. We know we should wear our age like a badge of pride. But as long as we’re being honest, let’s admit that it’s damned hard to stay positive about aging when the world bombards us with messages that aging is something to be ashamed of.

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You don’t care much for being called old for a very good reason: The word carries a social stigma.

“The larger culture is riddled with language, images, songs, cards, and messages devaluing aging,” explains Tracey Gendron, the author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It. “Collectively these cultural artifacts reinforce the social construction of age.” That construction, she adds, “generally places value on youth over the aged.”Or to paraphrase Animal Farm: Old Age Bad, Young Age Good.

It Starts in ChildhoodThis stigmatization has been fed into our brains since childhood. Hansel and Gretel encounter a wicked witch in the form of an older woman. Red Riding Hood sets off to deliver treats to her frail, sickly, bedridden grandmother. According to one research study, children begin to identify age stereotypes by age 6.

Here’s the unfortunate part: To the extent that we recoil from labels like “old,” and to the extent that we apply “anti-aging” remedies to hide evidence of the passage of time, we have tacitly accepted the social construction of ageism as truth. We have internalized society’s ageism and turned it against ourselves. We have swallowed the Kool-Aid.

Fighting back against ageism in our culture is hard enough. Fighting it when it has permeated our own consciousness is incredibly difficult.

But it’s a necessary fight. Accepting ageism as fact poses a real danger to our physical and mental health. Yale University Professor Becca Levy’s groundbreaking 2002 study established that positive attitudes about aging can increase how long we live. Levy found that older adults with more positive self-perceptions of aging, as measured up to 23 years earlier, lived 7.5 years longer than those with less positive self-perceptions of aging.

Levy’s recent research centers on how society’s messages about aging affect a person’s health and well-being. “People who take in more negative age beliefs tend to show worse physical, cognitive, and mental health,” she says. They tend to suffer higher levels of stress, which has been linked to many diseases of aging, and they are less likely to embrace healthy behaviors.

A National CampaignWhere do we begin freeing ourselves from internalized ageism?

A great place to start is with the Internalized Ageism Campaign launched this year by Changing the Narrative, a nationwide initiative to end ageism through public communications campaigns. The nonprofit’s website provides a variety of helpful resources. What I find particularly useful is a section called “reframing your story.” There’s a chart with practical suggestions for turning ageist thoughts into age-positive statements. (You may recognize the technique if you’ve ever dabbled in cognitive behavioral therapy.)

For example, telling yourself “I’m too old to start something new” is countered with five positive statements, including “I’m a lifelong learner, I’m curious, and I want to know more” and “I’m creative and can do this.” The negative, ageist thought “I’m having a senior moment” is replaced by “I’ve forgotten things all my life” and “This happens whenever I get too busy.”

It’s also worth remembering that the attitudes that undergird ageist beliefs are mostly built on falsehoods. Are some old people fragile and dependent? Yes. Is it true of most old people? No - particularly if your definition of “old” is anyone over 60. There’s a heap of difference between 60-year-olds and 90-year-olds, though we are often grouped together under one umbrella. Similarly, do some older adults suffer cognitive loss? Yes. Is it true of most older adults? No.

In Levy’s latest book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging determine How Long and Well You Live, she digs deeply into more than a dozen beliefs about aging, and “in every case, I found information that not only contradicted the negative stereotype but also highlighted a strength that comes with aging.” While some cognitive skills slow over time, for example, she found that other cognitive functions remain strong and some even improve.

Being an older adult in America is challenging enough without giving the ageists aid and comfort from within ourselves. Staying positive about our age and rooting out our internalized ageism is essential for our own physical and mental health.

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Summer has always been my favorite season. In addition to the strong emotional connection I make between summer and academic freedom – freedom from academics, that is – I love baseball, cookouts, watermelon, walking barefoot in the grass, ice cream, and reading books just for fun.

These days, though, I find my appreciation for the season diminishing. My jubilation is tempered by temperatures rising to dizzying heights and swamp-like humidity. A brisk 15-minute walk to the grocery is an existential struggle against gravity: Each step feels like pulling up a 50-pound log. I can feel my strength dissipate, and with it any desire to exert myself in any way that is not absolutely necessary. Even my brain is muddled - finishing a thought is like swimming upstream in pea soup.

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Is it me, or are summers more brutal than they used to be?

This is not an idle question. I pondered it, and I researched it, and I found answers. My investigations confirm that the answers are yes and yes. Yes, it is partly me – my aging body can’t take extreme temperatures as well as it used to. And also yes, climate change is making summers hotter and more deadly than they ever have been.

Let’s talk about our bodies first. Older adults are at high risk of getting sick and even dying when temperatures rise. To be specific, adults aged 60 and older account for an estimated 80% of the 12,000 people who die annually of heat-related causes. Hyperthermia is the umbrella term for these illnesses, which include heat stroke, heat edema (swelling feet and ankles), heat syncope (dizziness), heat cramps, and heat exhaustion.

Broken ThermostatsThere are a number of reasons why this is so, all having to do with the aging process. The bottom line is our internal thermostat goes out of whack. It becomes much harder to cool down our bodies. Our sweat glands are less efficient. Our bodies hold more heat when temperatures climb. Our blood circulation is slower. A layer of fat just below the skin, which acts as insulation, thins out.

Compound these normal aspect of aging with certain medications, cardiovascular issues, high blood pressure, alcohol, obesity, or lung and kidney diseases, and you have high vulnerability to extreme and prolonged heat.

Broken PlanetBut while our aging bodies make us more sensitive to temperature extremes, our planet keeps warming. Earth’s average surface temperature is warmer by 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, than it was in 1880. The overwhelming majority of scientists believe the cause is the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels. Average temperatures for 2010-2019 are the highest on record.

And let’s not forget good old garden-variety air pollution. The same fossil fuel burning that is creating climate change also increases pollutants, whether it’s dust from droughts, smoke from wildfires, ozone, or other particulate matter. Air pollution raises the risks for heart attacks in older adults, and it can worsen cases of asthma and COPD.

And if you happen to be sensitive to pollen, look out! Climate change has brought on earlier spring thaws, changes in rainfall, and concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air, all of which can lengthen the pollen season and make it more severe. The ragweed season is already lengthening in parts of the U.S.

Safety FirstIf you’re looking for venues in which to prove your ageless vitality, I strongly advise against challenging summer heat. We are talking about serious health risks. While nobody wants to spend the summer indoors 24/7, please consider a few sensible and scientifically approved precautions.

• Stay hydrated. Drink enough water, at frequent intervals, to keep your body cool. Ask your doctor if you should drink fluids with extra electrolytes.
• Stay in air-conditioning, if you have it. If you don’t, reach out to friends and family that do, or check out public cooling centers in your area.
• Check air quality before going out. AirNow.gov provides daily reports on air quality by zip code. Search “weather today” on Google for real-time reports on humidity, temperature, rainfall, and any heat advisories.
• Wear insect repellant to protect against tick and mosquito bites.
• Don’t forget your sunscreen.
• If the power goes out, do not stay home alone. Head for a cooling center or a friend.
• Don’t stay outside too long. Take breaks to come inside, cool off, and drink fluids.

In other words, don’t pick a fight with Mother Nature – especially now that she’s displaying a cruel streak.

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No. 60/July 3, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Campaign Aims to End Ageism in OurselvesChanging the Narrative, a Colorado-based initiative to end ageism, has launched a 2024 campaign to end internalized ageism – the ageist beliefs buried deep wit…

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When we were growing up, it was expected that we would get educated, get a job, and get our own place to live, more or less in that order.

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It’s easy to believe that this is how it always was and how it always will be. In fact, we just happened to live at a fortunate time in the history of America. Life didn’t work quite that way in the past, and the housing market today makes it nearly impossible to work that way now.

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In most American cities, few young adults can afford to rent or own their own home. Housing affordability, as measured by the National Association of Home Builders, is at nearly its lowest level in more than a decade. Mortgage rates are high, home prices are high and rising, and rent is somewhere in the stratosphere.

That’s why nearly half of adults ages 18 to 29 still live with their parents, according to scholars at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School – a proportion not seen since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the age spectrum, more older Americans are moving in with their children. As for those who can’t, it shouldn’t be a shocker that Americans ages 50 and up are the fastest-growing group of homeless individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Older adults account for about half of the total homeless population.

Remember “paradigm shifts?” We’re having one right now. The old paradigm we grew up with was one nuclear family per home. That reality is shattering at the hands of that old mother of invention, Madame Necessity.

What we are seeing – and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing – is both young adults and older adults turning more frequently to multigenerational living – just as they did in the past.

Boarding HousesBefore World War II. It was common for three or four generations of a family to live together in one home. (Remember The Waltons?) For single individuals, there were boarding houses, where men or women rented private rooms and took their board at a common table. There are few remnants of the boarding house era today except for the colorful name of a dining faux pas, the “boarding house reach.”

But if boarding houses aren’t making a comeback, other shared housing arrangements are. According to the Pew Research Center, in the 50 years from 1971 to 2021, the number of people living in multigenerational family households quadrupled, to nearly 60 million. Those 60 million account for 18% of the population, double the 1971 share. Some of that, to be sure, is a result of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Philippines, with strong traditions of extended family living in one place. But it is also happening among those who have lived in the U.S. for several generations.

For older adults, it often means moving in with their children and grandchildren. For young adults, it may take the form of remaining in the parents’ home or living with multiple roommates.

Though financial considerations are the primary driver, caregiving is often a close second. The Pew study found that a third of adults in multigenerational households cite caregiving as a major reason for their arrangement.

Four Popular PlansJamie Gold, a wellness design consultant and Certified Aging in Place Specialist, says multigenerational residences generally fall into four main categories:

1. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) – also known as “granny flats,” a homeowner can build a garage apartment, a freestanding tiny home, or a home addition to provide living space for, in most cases, a parent. Or, if the homeowner is ready to downsize but not to sell, the homeowners can occupy the addition and make the house available to their children and grandchildren. (Unfortunately, many local zoning laws prohibit ADUs.)

2. Dual Suite Homes – a larger home with two primary suites (similar in concept to a duplex, only without dividing walls). For the most part, these need to be custom designed and built.

3. Multigenerational Communities – some far-sighted developers are designing new home communities that make it practical for older adults and younger families to live near each other.

4. Spare Rooms – it may be possible to bring another family member into the home without building an ADU or an addition. According to Redfin, a real estate company, homeowners ages 60 to 78 (i.e., baby boomers) own 28% of homes with three or more bedrooms. Millennials with children own 14%. Spare rooms can also work in a different way – older adult homeowners may opt to “homeshare” with a younger person to reduce the cost of ownership and gain companionship. (For more on homesharing, see this previous post.)

Although pragmatic realities are driving this trend, it’s worth remembering that intergenerational relationships have many benefits for individuals and for society as a whole. To cite just one example, studies find that multigenerational relationships have a positive impact on the mental health of both older and younger individuals. A University of Exeter study found that children who had close relationships with their grandparents had fewer emotional and behavioral problems.

Beyond that, adds Karen Midyet, a psychologist and retirement coach, relationships between generations also foster understanding and empathy. “When people of different age groups come together,” she says, “they are often able to learn from each other’s experiences and perspectives.” And in an increasingly diverse society, “intergenerational relationships can help bridge the gaps between different cultural and generational groups.”

Goodnight, John-Boy.

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You might think that after 40+ years of having sex, craving sex, obsessing over sex, dressing for sex, dreaming of sex, talking about sex, joking about sex, getting anxious about sex, enjoying sex, pretending to enjoy sex, feeling guilty about sex, feeling embarrassed about sex – perhaps older adults might be ready to say, “Enough, already.”

That attitude certainly conforms with certain pervasive and offensive stereotypes about old age – the ones that regard anyone older than 60 (except for a few venerable box office draws) as sexless, used-up fossils.

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The numbers tell a different story.

A survey in England finds that 86% of men and 60% of women in their 60s call themselves sexually active. By their 70s, it’s 59% of men and 34% of women. In the U.S., among people ages 75-85 who described themselves as sexually active, more than half reported having sex two or three times monthly, and 23% said they had sex one or more times weekly. Even after discounting for male bragging, the numbers paint a picture that diverges radically from common (ageist) assumptions.

It should be obvious what is going on here: As bona fide baby boomers, members of the generation that discovered sex, we have a reputation to uphold.

We’re even adapting to modern times by using online dating apps. On one such app, Feeld, membership among the 60-and-up crowd has increased 340% since 2022. On Match.com, the 50-plus population comprise 26% of all users. A Pew Research study found that one in five singles in their 50s has used Tinder.

Better Sex!Evidence suggests that having positive thoughts about sex produces more and better sex. For the Midlife in the U.S. study, hundreds of partnered adults ages 45 and up were asked how satisfying they expected their sex lives to be in 10 years. Ten years later, when researchers followed up, the optimists reported having more frequent and more satisfying sex than those with lower expectations. A 2017 poll by the University of Michigan found 54% of adults aged 65 to 80 said sex was important for their overall quality of life.

According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA), many older couples find greater sexual satisfaction than they did when they were younger. On its face, that statement sounds implausible. No one denies that age can bring any number of illnesses and physical changes that can and do impede sexual activity. The NIA even presents a long alphabetical list of complications, from alcohol and arthritis through stroke and surgery.

Despite the impediments, the people who enjoy sex well past midlife seem to be those with the most creativity and flexibility. Janie Steckenrider, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount College, notes that many people assume “that the term sex refers only to partnered sex and intercourse, which is not the reality for many older adults who adapt their sexual activity because of erectile dysfunction, vaginal dryness, arthritis, mobility limitations, effects of medication, or serious health conditions.” Some alternatives to penetrative sex, she writes, include oral sex, kissing, fondling, and masturbation.

Now the Bad NewsAge may be no barrier to having sex, but it’s also no barrier to having sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In the decade from 2012 to 2022, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia among people 55 and older more than doubled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of older adults infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is also growing. HIV may be out of the headlines, but it’s not out of the human ecosystem. Safe sex would prevent these infections, but many older adults don’t think they need protection because they’re too old to get pregnant.

Also – and this may be a bigger issue – they don’t talk about sex with their doctors. Why? Because many doctors buy into that ageist thinking. It does not occur to them that adults of a certain age are still sexually active. In most cases, any doctor-patient discussion happens at the patient’s initiative. Professor Steckenrider argues that doctors should be more proactive and make sexual health a part of routine health care. But if you still have an active sex life, you may have to start a frank and open conversation with your physician. Until more doctors change their perspectives on old age, the onus is on you.

So hurray for sex, in all its many-splendored variations! May you continue enjoying it for as long as you want. But let’s be careful out there.

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No. 59/June 19, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Financial Advisers Must Put Your Interests FirstWait – you mean they don’t already?

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When I read predictions of what climate change will do to our world over the next 50 years, I am sorely tempted to follow the counsel of Charlie Brown: “No problem is so big or so complicated that it can’t be run away from.”

However, it is already too late to run. The latest evidence of climate change’s rapid advance comes from what might seem like an unlikely source: homeowner’s insurance. But shocking premium increases clobbering homeowners and would-be homeowners are directly connected to the frequency of super-sized natural disasters. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of severe climate-related disasters in the U.S. rose 32%, while insured losses rose almost 300%.

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Homeowner’s insurance premiums rocketed upward in 10 states this year – by 63% in Louisiana, 61% in Nebraska, and only a “mere” 32% in Arkansas and Kansas. (The other states are Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Illinois, District of Columbia, and North Dakota.) Insurance companies set rates state by state, based on actual and anticipated losses.

Industry sources cite more frequent, more destructive, and more costly hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires as one cause of the increases. At this point, only die-hard flat-earthers are denying that climate change is driving the climate-related disasters. The second factor is higher costs to repair or rebuild homes after a loss. Not only are building materials more expensive, but a shortage of skilled labor in the construction industry is pushing wages upward.

The insurance business is built around calculated risk. Industry actuaries create mathematical models to set premium rates that will produce more revenue than what gets paid out in claims. In the current models, years of high losses are balanced out by more profitable years. But the frequency of extreme weather events – and the higher costs of rebuilding – has meant more bad years than expected.

A New York Times analysis concludes that insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states last year. In reaction, insurers are not just raising premiums. They are also cutting back on what they will cover. In some cases, they are abandoning states where they see little chance of making a profit.

Homeowners in climate-challenged states are not happy with their insurers. In January the Deloitte Center for Financial Services conducted a survey of homeowners in 21 states at high risk of climate-related disasters, focusing on respondents who said their coverage was inadequate. More than half said existing coverage options are too expensive, and 23% were struggling to find insurance options as companies are writing fewer policies or abandoning states entirely. Many were surprised to find premiums going up when they have filed no claims themselves. Of those who did file claims, about half were either denied or were approved for less than half of the damages, due to coverage exclusions.

Shockwaves Through the EconomyThis is not just a pocketbook issue for homeowners. The insurance industry’s problems have the potential to trigger other problems through the economy, such as:

• When fewer companies offer insurance in a state, homeowners find it more expensive to insure homes – for most households, their most valuable financial asset.
• Thousands who own homes in disaster-risky areas will find it impossible to get coverage except through state-mandated high-risk insurance pools. Any losses insured by those funds are covered by that state’s taxpayers. Catastrophic losses might force states to cut funding for other needs.
• Thousands who want to purchase homes in disaster-risky areas won’t be able to get them insured, and without insurance, banks won’t make mortgage loans. Real estate that can’t be sold loses value. That will translate into lower property taxes for local jurisdictions.

As Carolyn Kousky, an officer of the Environmental Defense Fund, told the New York Times: “Insurance is where many people are feeling the economic impacts of climate change first. That is going to spill over into housing markets, mortgage markets, and local economies.”

Meanwhile, American migratory patterns are still driving more people to the riskiest locales. During the pandemic, migration to the most flood-prone counties in the U.S. more than doubled, according to Redfin, a real estate company, and migration to counties with the highest wildfire risk rose 51%. Some of them are in for rude surprises.

It’s too late to run, so brace yourself. This is just the beginning of climate-related reverberations through our lives.

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I started this newsletter three years ago to focus on positive aspects of aging. Sometimes I stray from that idea, as you may have noticed. Recently I have posted on such less-than-positive topics as loneliness, memory lapses, Alzheimer’s, retirement myths, gray divorce, and phobias – although I do try to give them a positive spin. But today, I’m getting back on mission by focusing on the positive, starting with the positives in my own life. The fact is, I find myself (most of the time) rather happy with my age and content with my standing in the world.

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This may not be a coincidence. Have you heard of the U-shaped curve of happiness? This is a theory, based on statistical analysis, that people tend to be happiest in their 20s, see their happiness take a deep dive in middle-age, and then enjoy a happiness rebound in their later years. The name comes from the shape of the curve when you graph it. It’s a popular idea, which some scientific quants now dispute because of questionable methodology.

I don’t have a dog in that fight, but it doesn’t matter. What I am experiencing fits the theory. I am older, wiser, and happier than I was in midlife, and I can identify some specific reasons.

If It Makes You HappyWhy am I happy? Let me count the ways.

• I am living the life I dreamed about as a child – a person whose principal occupation is writing. (Reality looks a little different than the dream, of course – my desk is not in a turret overlooking a park, for example – but it’s close enough.)
• My time is my own – as structured or unstructured as I want (as long as I meet my self-imposed publishing deadlines).
• Young people (i.e., under 60) tell me their problems, and I dispense advice that they treat as if it were wisdom. If there is any wisdom in it, which I question, it derives from experience. I’ve lived long enough to have encountered all kinds of people and seen patterns repeat themselves.
• I’ve stopped worrying about whether I am sexually attractive. It’s irrelevant. People see me on the street and just assume that I am post-sexual, and I see no gain in correcting their impressions. I don’t waste time trying to get my hair - what’s left of it – to look right. I don’t waste energy obsessing about the midriff bulge that will not budge – especially after my nephrologist assured me that being a little overweight is healthier than being underweight and that my current weight is “perfect.”
• I am not anxious about money for the first time since adolescence.
• Nobody cares if I walk around barefoot.
• My body is still working entirely with original parts, most of them in good working order.
• It is my good fortune that the beautiful, whip-smart girl I fell for 50 years ago is still my wife, best friend, and closest companion.
• I am on speaking terms with my daughter, my son, my daughter-in-law, my mother-in-law, my four grandchildren, my siblings, and most of my cousins.
• I am fortunate to live in the era of GPS software, because yes, I do need one more woman in my life telling me where to go.
• I have no debts. I neither a borrower nor a lender be.

In Ethics of the Fathers, a Jewish wisdom text, the sage Ben Zoma asks and answers, “Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion.”

I think that describes me. I’m content with what I have. I hope that you find your way there too.

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No. 58/June 5, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers

Summer Bulletin: Watch Out for Heat WavesDeadly heat waves across the globe are posing serious health risks for older adults, who are the most likely to die from extreme temperatures. An article by fo…

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When it comes to employment for older adults, two competing forces are crashing against each other.

On the one hand, millions of older adults want to “unretire” and rejoin the workforce. Often money is the motivator – they haven’t saved enough for retirement, or they fear inflation is eroding what savings they have. Others reentering the job market have tried retirement and found it boring. They miss both the camaraderie of co-workers and a compelling reason to get out of bed.

On the other hand, when older adults return to the job market, they hit the other force – age discrimination – like a brick wall. While some companies welcome older workers, many more enforce personnel policies that push older workers out the door, forcing them to retire sooner than they had intended. Even though it’s widely understood that experienced workers can be valuable assets, both the unretired and the forcibly retired find it hard to break through archaic ageist traditions.

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Hard, but not impossible. If you want to work, there are ways. You just have to be smarter about it. Although online advice abounds, half of it seems to be composed by artificial intelligence and all of it should be taken with 100 grains of salt.

Fortunately for you, I am a highly experienced job seeker – by my count, I was hired for nine different positions over the years (and turned down for dozens more) – so I am eminently qualified to help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Herewith, my distillation of the most sensible suggestions:

Work your network.This is always #1. Just as you’re more likely to select a dentist, a plumber, or a broker based on a recommendation from someone you trust, the same is true of employers. The surest way to get hired is for someone you know on the inside to put in a good word on your behalf. And since you never know who might know whom, tell everyone you know that you are looking for work, and what kind of work you’re looking for. Not just your business contacts, either. Speak to family members, friends, members of your church, strangers on the street. The wider the net you cast, the more prospective fish you might harvest.

Check the ads.Compared to referrals from friends, answering ads is like going on blind dates. Still, ads tell you who’s hiring. Newspapers (remember newspapers?) still carry some help wanted ads, I suppose, but now the most active job boards are social media sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Idealist, and a host of others. Note that these sites post recruitment ads for all ages. For employers who are open to older workers, try one or more online job boards specifically for older adults, including AARP, RetirementJobs.com, Rent a Grandma, FlexJobs, RetiredBrains, Seniors4Hire, and Workforce50.

You can get a rundown on these sites and a few others here and here.

In addition, most states post jobs with state government, and some cities have employment centers for residents.

One other place to consider is the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), which works with low-income, unemployed adults age 55 and older. Those who meet the program guidelines are matched with part-time positions where they can build skills and confidence while earning money. Most participants leverage their SCSEP experience into a permanent job.

Fly Under the Radar.Many companies use software to screen applicants, which translates to eliminating as many candidates as possible from the start. To get past the screens, make sure your resume includes no dates that give away your age. Instead of “22 years of experience,” write “more than 10 years.” Don’t list jobs you held more than 15 years ago – that’s ancient history. Also don’t declare your skills on software that is now considered an anachronism, such as Word Perfect. If your email account is still at AOL, consider getting a Google or Yahoo email address instead.

Update Your Resume.Back when I was a pup, the standard resume format was chronological. You listed positions you had held in reverse order, with the most current first. No format could be worse for older adults, because this reveals just how chronologically gifted you are. That’s not what you want to highlight. Fortunately, other formats allow you to showcase your skills and experience in a favorable light.

A functional resume emphasizes skills and strengths that will be important to employers. It gives you the opportunity to highlight skills that are transferable from one field to another. It’s also useful if you demonstrated your skills in volunteer work or coursework. A third format, the combination resume, takes the best of both – it shows off your employment record and lays out your transferable skills.

Best practice is to tailor each resume to the position you seek. And while a plain, typed resume is okay, there are dozens of attractive, free templates online that you can use to dress it up.

Consider Temp Work.When employers need to fill a vacancy immediately, they often turn to the temporary staffing agencies. Temping is one way to keep income flowing your way while you wait for something permanent. Also, it is not unheard of for a temporary worker to be such a good fit that an employer hires them for a full-time position.

Prepare for Interviews.Don’t be surprised if your initial interview is virtual. To prepare, find out what platform (Zoom, for example) the employer uses, and get comfortable with it before the interview. Make sure your camera is positioned correctly and your audio is working.

You never know what questions may come up in the interview, and you can’t prepare for everything, but it wouldn’t hurt to have practiced answers to these reliable old chestnuts:

• Why do you want to work here?
• What’s your biggest weakness?
• What’s your long-term goal?
• Why are you looking for a job now?
• Why should we hire you?

Accentuate Your Adaptability.There’s a good chance that what you did early in your career is now obsolete. So you need to make the case that the skills you honed then can be applied to the work of today. The more you know about what the job entails, the better you can give examples of how your skills apply to necessary tasks.

You may also want to check these sources for additional tips on job-hunting strategies and interviewing technique.

The bottom line is that you must put in the work to find work. But it’s there, and the forces of age discrimination against older adults seem to be making a slow retreat. Hang in there, and happy hunting.

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This week I celebrated another birthday (73, thank you very much) with the customary rituals of witty cards, calls from my siblings, and dozens of birthday clicks from Facebook friends. I appreciate all the wishes for my wellness. However, each of my last few birthdays has felt less celebratory because of the troubling question that gets in my head and refuses to leave: Am I old yet?

This is the sort of question that does not make easy conversation at the dinner table, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s the question that, if the truth be known, I would rather not discuss, ever. (Which begs another question: Why is that?)

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To be completely honest, I must admit that I have been played. Despite my best intentions, and despite knowing better, I have allowed society’s ageist attitudes to infiltrate my consciousness.

We (I assume I am not alone in feeling this way) resist labeling ourselves as old because old age is still stigmatized. We resist because we know that the outside world conflates old age with weakness, wrinkles, frailty, sexlessness, losing it upstairs, antiquity. Old people are called names, most of them are kind: geezer, old fart, crone, biddy, relic, shriveled. They outnumber the times an old person is described respectfully as a sage or elder by ten to one.

But facts are facts. We are getting older. So when are we “old?”

I looked for a definitive answer, but the answers turn out to be multifaceted. Let’s turn them over, one facet at a time.

HistoricalThe age at which old age begins is different in different eras. In 1900, many gerontologists believed old age began at 47. Over many centuries and civilizations, the consensus was that a man or woman in their 50s or 60s was old. Although the Bible does not state clearly when old age begins, we do know that “the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years.” (Psalm 90:10)

Voice of the PeopleA survey published last month in Psychology and Aging Journal found that people in their mid-60s peg the start of old age at 75 – and the older people are, the later they think old age begins. The survey’s lead author, Markus Wettstein, said respondents today see the beginning of old age later than their peers 10 and 20 years ago. “Some people have such a negative view of the elderly that they don’t want to be associated with them,” says John Rowe, a Columbia University professor of health policy and aging. “So if they’re 60 years old, they’ll say old age begins at 75. And when they get to 75, they’ll say old age begins at 80.”

Young men (ages 16-34), by the way, said in a 2018 survey that old age begins at 56. Young women said old age begins at 61. But who cares what they think?

GerontologicalRecognizing that a typical 60-year-old is in quite a different place than a typical 90-year-old, gerontologists are dividing old age into phases. One popular divvy is young-old (65-74), middle-old (75-84), and old-old (85 and up). They also see the first two phases as a separate life stage of active retirement, which they variously name Third Age, Encore Years, Third Chapter, or Adulthood II. I prefer to call it The AfterWork.

BureaucraticFor statistical purposes, the federal government uses age 65 to mark the start of old age. Since Medicare eligibility starts at 65 and Social Security did until recently, this is a convenient number for compiling research.

AARP issues membership cards at age 50, but nobody accepts that a 50-year-old is elderly. Not even AARP.

The World Economic Forum has begun defining old age through a measure they call “prospective age,” which means that it starts at the point when the average person has 15 years left to live. If 60-year-olds on average live to be 85, for example, then old age starts at 70. This measure would be more useful if we knew when we were going to die and could count backwards.

Common SensicalChronology is not a good measure of old age. Age is more a state of mind. “By itself your age indicates little or nothing about your health, happiness, or likely longevity,” says Tracey Gendron, author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It. Moreover, there’s a considerable body of evidence suggesting that your mindset makes a sizeable difference in both how well you live and how long you live. British researchers Hannah Kuper and Sir Michael Marmot asked people when they thought old age began. When they followed up six to nine years later, the people who thought old age began earlier were more likely to have had a heart attack, heart disease, or in poor physical health. Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health made a similar finding: People with positive outlooks on their own aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those who were less positive.

“We’re taught that aging is a process of decline,” says Gendron, “but we’re actually always growing and developing.”

To sum it up, I have not found a numerical answer to the question of when old age begins. But it seems that the more positive you are about your own aging, the longer it will be before old age sets in.

Or, to answer the question with a philosophical twist: I think I am not, therefore I am not.

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No. 57/May 22, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Senior Care Chains Protest Staffing MandatesTo the surprise of exactly no one, the owners of senior care facilities are objecting to a new rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requ…

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Surveys consistently show that the vast majority of older adults prefer to age in place – in the comfort of their homes – rather than in institutional care. One big obstacle to achieving that happy outcome is a nationwide shortage of home healthcare workers available to bring services to the home. Though the number of direct care workers has doubled to 5.1 million over two decades, that’s still 3.8 million fewer workers than the number of job openings expected by 2032.

Fear not! Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to the rescue! Just ask the AI boosters and visionaries, who proclaim a future in which AI companions will combat loneliness and social isolation, AI monitors and sensors will warn of falls and serious illnesses before they occur, and AI fonts of all knowledge will offer tentative diagnoses, solve tech problems, and show users how to use all the features of their tech appliances.

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My advice: Don’t hold your breath. These predicted uses for AI fall neatly into a category known as science fiction. In science fiction, any bloke of average intelligence can click a button on his smartphone to activate any smart device in his smart home, because everything is integrated into a single seamless system. We know this must be science fiction, because science nonfiction today looks nothing like it.

“Let’s say you have a smart tv, a smartphone, a personal computer, a tablet, and a smart thermostat. They’re not connected to each other,” said Laurie Orlov, the editor of the blog Aging and Health Technology Watch, in an interview with me last week. “Each installation is different. For any upgrades, you’re on your own.”

Solutions vs. ProductsOrlov says the time is right to create solutions – not products – for aging in place. “It’s great that 76% of people 65 and older in the U.S. have a smartphone,” she says. “But they want to use them in the home [to help them age in place]. They can’t yet.”

The first step toward creating an integrated solution, she says, would be industry-wide standards. Last year Matter was established as a connectivity standard for smart home devices, but it has not been widely adopted. Some product makers are reluctant, Orlov says, because they “seek to give their products competitive differentiation” to gain an edge in the marketplace. “Apple is among the worst on that score.” For example, Apple’s iMessage feature works only on Apple devices; the messages can’t be read on android phones. Orlov also notes that in her own household she has an android phone, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch – three devices that require three different chargers.

Orlov frequently chastises the tech industry for releasing products that frustrate older adults by being difficult to operate, having inadequate tech support, and just generally ignoring the preferences and needs of older consumers.

Customers Don’t Matter“The customer no longer matters,” she wrote in a recent post. Despite wider access to tech, “there are many more problems with using poorly designed or inappropriate tech.” The user experience is mostly “a constant struggle to produce the right command, find the right part of the right website, and overcome the insanity of bug-fixing updates after updates. And that is if you are well-trained and proficient” – which most of us are not.

Those issues notwithstanding, Orlov is a believer when it comes to AI. “It’s already here now, and it’s extremely useful,” she says. “Health care is using it because they need it,” given worker shortages and high rates of staff burnout.

“If you look at the history of technology, many changes were intimidating at first,” she says. Eventually they were widely adopted, and the technology became more sophisticated.

She predicts AI will be a widely accepted part of aging at home – once the tech companies put down their combat armor long enough to agree on common standards that will make well integrated systems possible.

It also wouldn’t hurt for those tech companies to spend more time listening to older adults so they could design products that we consider truly useful and easy to use. But for now, that’s just more science fiction.

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I have been beating myself up for several months about my undisciplined work habits. When I buckle down and concentrate, I can achieve a week’s worth of writing in two full days. But finding that concentration is difficult, and more often a week’s worth of writing takes the whole week. In between spurts of productivity, I spend an inordinate amount of time scrolling through social media.

My favorite time suck of late is video clips on Facebook – mostly episodes of cop shows and medical dramas, with a sprinkling of standup comedians and scenes from romcoms of the past three decades. I am an easy target because I never watched much television, so I eagerly gorge myself on these short bits to see what I’ve missed. Whenever I decide I’ve earned a short break from work, I open Facebook, and when I look up again it’s an hour later.

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Thalia Toha, a writer and CEO of a business consulting firm, observed that scrolling social media “resembles a Las Vegas casino’s coin-operated slot machine.” Her statement accurately captures how scrolling feels to me: A pleasant distraction on the brink of becoming an addiction.

“The attention economy” is a label bandied around to explain the social media environment. A more accurate label would be “the distraction economy,” and it applies to more than social media. How hard is it to sit down for 60 minutes of concentrated work? Too hard! “In our research,” says Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, “we find that people check email on average 77 times a day.” Though I seldom get telephone calls these days, I look up every time I do. And each time a ding announces a new text message, I drop what I’m doing because it might be from a family member, and texts tend to need immediate answers.

The problem is just that – the expectation of quick answers. Back in the day, we wrote letters and were happy if they were answered within a week. A telephone call was a treat. A long-distance call meant someone had died. Advertisers addressed us in 60-second commercials. Today it’s hard to imagine a world in which communication could have been so slow. Letters have yielded to email messages, and we are annoyed if they are not answered in 24 hours. People who are too busy to write email send texts (or tweets), and a one-hour response time is an interminable wait. Commercials are now 15 seconds or even 6 seconds. In movies and television shows, the average length of a camera shot is 4 seconds.

Whether these realities are in response to shorter attention spans or causing them is hard to determine. But without question, our attention spans are measurably shorter than they were as recently as 20 years ago. In 2004, the average attention span on a computer screen was two and a half minutes (150 seconds), according to Mark’s research. By 2012 it was 75 seconds. The most recent studies peg it at just 47 seconds.

The Multitasking FallacySome will argue that they don’t need a long attention span, since they are efficient multitaskers. The preponderant weight of scientific evidence on multitasking strongly suggests that argument is a load of crap.

“We have fallen for an enormous delusion,” says writer Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention. Careful research shows that when people think they are doing several things at once, they actually are switching back and forth between tasks. Each switch requires time to refocus on where you left off. Although you may feel you are performing in top form on multiple tasks at once, the research tells a different story: When focus is interrupted by switching – to another task or to respond to a text – performance slips about 20%. Mark says studies show a correlation between frequency of attention shifting and stress, including higher blood pressure. Frequent switching also leads to more errors and slower performance.

It’s Not All on You If you are having trouble staying focused, there are definitely things you can and should do to improve personal performance. But understand that it’s not all on you. “This isn’t happening because we all individually became weak-willed,” writes Hari. “Your focus didn’t collapse. It was stolen.” Strengthening your powers of concentration or swearing off all social media might help you, but the problem isn’t you; it’s systemic.

Hari quotes former Google engineer James Williams saying that personal growth “is not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution…it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” It’s not helpful to blame the individual when “it’s the environmental changes that will really make the difference.”

Hari argues that “we need to band together to take on the forces stealing our attention and take it back.” It’s a worthy goal, but I have to wonder just what we can accomplish in 47 seconds.

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No. 56/May 8, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Real Estate Agents Help Families Leave Blue StatesA real estate company called Conservative Move specializes in helping politically and/or religiously conservative families living in blue states relo…

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I paid my first visit to a new ophthalmologist last month. Her office was in the suburbs, in a sprawling office park of identical, square, red brick buildings surrounded by parking lots. To distinguish one building from another, they were cleverly named I, II, and III. I was looking for II. I followed the signs that pointed me to I and II. Then I saw only signs for I, so I followed them and eventually stumbled upon II. I parked and entered.

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I emerged 90 minutes later with a new prescription, dilated eyes, and plastic sunglasses perched uncertainly over my regular eyeglasses. I remembered that I had parked at the end of a row, so I strode confidently across the lot to find…nothing. My car was not there. I looked at the ends of other rows and …still nothing. Panic descended on me, along with a powerful sense of déjà vu. “Oh no!” I thought. “It’s that dream, only this time it’s real!”

Swiftly followed by a second thought: “Damn! Is this dementia?”

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I’ll return to that dream in a moment. But first, to cut to the chase, it is not dementia. It’s just my inherent disability when it comes to navigation. I get turned around easily; just ask my wife and kids, who have seen the proof on road trips. The basic problem this time was that I had entered the building from the front but exited from the side. Ergo, wrong parking lot. Once I recognized the front of the building and the closest lot to it, I found the car at the end of a row, right where I left it. Huzzah!

Now, about that dream.

The Lost Car DreamIt is a recurring dream that I have had often, for many years. I am about to drive somewhere but I can’t find my car in the parking lot. For the remainder of the dream I desperately search other parking lots, and in some versions an impound lot, but my car never shows up.

Clearly, I’m not the only one having the lost car dream. A Google search turns up more than a dozen websites offering interpretations of it. Here are some possible explanations from the Dream Catcher Dictionary:

• You are highly stressed – perhaps you have trouble coping with obligations and roles you are expected to play.
• You lack control in your life – life is taking you places you didn’t anticipate.
• You are unsatisfied with the direction of your life – perhaps you subconsciously fear growing old.
• You need to slow down – you feel stuck and unable to move forward. Maybe you need to take a break and reflect on what you’re doing.
• You are searching for something (or someone) – perhaps you are on a quest for answers to life’s big questions, or a life partner, and you still – haven’t found – what you’re looking for.
• You have experienced a loss – the parked car may symbolize the loss of someone important to you.
• Your approach to life may be immature – you don’t take obligations and duties seriously, and the lost car is the result.
• You have unfulfilled goals and desires – you could have done more with your life, but your secret desires have not been achieved for lack of self-confidence, motivation, or drive.

Reading these fortune-cookie-style interpretations, it’s obvious that the dream may mean any of these things, or none of them. The exact meaning depends on who’s doing the dreaming. What the lost care means in my dream may not be what it means in yours. The best clue seems to be the emotions we feel as we experience the dream: Are we anxious? Confused? Frustrated? Angry? Adventurous?

Having said that, however, in general terms the dream is about not having control, feeling lost in life, or lacking the ambition to fulfill one’s own goals. My conscious and subconscious need to schedule a conversation about that.

An App for the IneptMeanwhile, back in the waking world, I may never suffer from misplacing my car ever again. My more tech savvy friends tell me that if I open the Map app when I park the car and touch the dot that indicates my location, on my return it will give me clues (Am I warmer? Colder?) to steer me to the car. I plan to give it a try next time.

For those of us like myself with navigational disability, it is comforting to know that a satellite orbiting miles above the earth can find my parked car when I, at ground level, cannot.

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My wife and I took the fateful step of downsizing 17 years ago, selling our three-story Victorian house and purchasing a cooperative apartment. At the time, we knew we had moved into a walkable neighborhood. This week I learned that we have also landed ourselves in a NORC – a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.

Unlike housing built specifically for older adults, a NORC is a neighborhood or building that just evolved to have lots of older adults living there – 40% or more of the population, according to the federal definition. That can happen because young people moved out and the people remaining just aged – a typical story in many rural areas and declining urban neighborhoods – or because older adults valued the amenities and moved in.

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The concept of the naturally occurring retirement community and its unfortunate acronym were coined in the 1980s by a professor of urban planning. In the 1990s federal grants were available to fund services in NORCs. That funding dried up, but at least 25 states recognize NORCs, and many target “supportive service programs” (NORC-SSPs in government-speak) to them. The concentration of older adults makes NORCs attractive and efficient places to locate services.

We were not looking for a NORC. Following the cardinal rules of real estate – location location location – we chose our apartment because we wanted to be less dependent on automobiles. We were anticipating the future, at least somewhat, and we thought a ground-level apartment, with many services within walking distance, would be a good place to age in place. Now half the residents of our co-op are also 55 or older. In the surrounding neighborhood, there are many more older adults living in apartments, as well as more than 200 living in an intentional senior housing center.

Accessible AmenitiesIn the years we have been here, the neighborhood has evolved in ways that make it even more attractive as a place to age. In a 15-minute walk we can get to three restaurants and a shopping center with a walk-in clinic, doctors’ offices, an organic grocery, a coffee shop, two fitness centers, a movie theater, and six fast-food outlets. Across the street from the shopping center is a rehab facility and another fitness center. In 25 minutes we can walk to a larger grocery, two drugstores, two bookstores, a weekend farmers’ market, and at least six more restaurants. There’s also a playground, five miles of walking trail, an art museum, and a university. The nearest hospital is 30 minutes on foot, or three minutes by car.

We are fortunate. Not all NORCs are as well stocked with amenities. In fact, a report by the AARP Public Policy Institute found that NORCs tend to score lower on the AARP Livability Index than neighborhoods with greater age diversity. Only 9% of NORCs are in the most livable quintile, and 36% are in the lowest.

Our neighborhood also bears a striking resemblance to another city planning concept attracting attention. Next month The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet, will appear in bookstores. Author Carlos Moreno, an urban planner and professor at the Sorbonne Business School, vigorously advocates locating work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure facilities in neighborhoods where residents can reach them within 15 minutes by walking, biking, or public transportation. Moreno contends that such cities are better than automobile-friendly cities for the environment (lower carbon footprint), for individual health (more walking) , for fostering more engagement with other residents, and for collective efforts to transform neighborhoods.

Climate Change and CovidThe Covid-19 pandemic and climate change have drawn more interest to 15-minute cities, but the big break came in 2020 when Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris (advised by Moreno), made implementing the 15-minute city a central plank of her successful reelection campaign. She began implementing the plan during the pandemic.

And because of the times in which we live, I also must note that conspiracy theories about the 15-minute concept are blasting across the Internet. The basic claim, often linked to QAnon, anti-vaccine, and anti-5G conspiracies, is that the 15-minute city concept is an instrument of government oppression. Wildfires in Maui, the dangerous train derailment in Ohio, and other events are cited as part of the plot to force residents into 15-minute cities. In Britain, a Conservative MP attacked the idea as an “international socialist concept,” to scattered snickering.

I haven’t always made brilliant decisions in my life, but moving to our current neighborhood is one that makes me seem downright sage-like. It’s an ideal place to age.

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No. 55/April 24, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Multigenerational Homes Are a TrendNot so long ago, the kids couldn’t wait to leave the nest. Today, they can scarcely afford to live anywhere else. If one or more of your children (or grandchildr…

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“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” the chairman of GM reportedly told Congress in the 1950s.

The finance industry has its own version of this truism. Armed with well-funded lobbyists, it has convinced majorities in both major political parties that what’s good for big finance is good for America. In particular, we’re talking tax-deferred retirement savings such as 401(k) plans, which they have promoted as a powerful tool to increase retirement savings among middle-class taxpayers.

But a report released this week by Politico contends that these popular savings programs have had little impact on middle-class savings but do amount to “a $300 billion windfall to the wealthy.”

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The 17-page, single-spaced report, with heavy sprinkles of technical jargon on every page, is the kind of report that only a policy wonk could love. I am no wonk, but I am concerned about what’s happening to my (and your) retirement benefits. Politico’s investigation connects the dots between tax-deferred savings and the well-publicized Social Security shortfall, which might cause benefit reductions starting in just ten years.

Opening a SinkholeAccording to Politico, 401(k) plans, IRAs, and Roth IRAs have barely made a dent in the savings rate. What they have done, however, is enable wealthy taxpayers to save significant sums on taxes, while opening a giant sinkhole in the federal budget – to the tune of $369 billion in lost revenues last year and $659 billion by 2027.

By way of comparison, Social Security’s cash shortfall is $119 billion – less than half of the cost of tax-advantaged savings last year.

Tax-deferred savings – which grew from $7 trillion in 1995 to $38.4 trillion in 2023 – also put the final nail in the coffin of private pensions. In earlier generations, many retirees depended on a pension to supplement Social Security benefits. State and local government employees still do. But corporations, feeling burdened by the responsibility of keeping pension funds solvent, have been getting out of the business.

The 401(k) plans came along to replace pensions – but with a twist. The 401(k) is entirely the responsibility of the employee, who has the “freedom” to make wise (or unwise) investment decisions and wise (or unwise) decisions about withdrawing funds.

The real winners of tax-deferred savings are not evenly distributed across the spectrum of taxpayers. Wealthy taxpayers can shelter up to $452,500 per year in tax-advantaged accounts, thereby saving up to $203,000 in taxes. Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told Politico, “I am persuaded that these [tax-deferred savings] bills are designed for the high-earners, and stuff for middle- and low-earners gets put in along the way to make the legislation less shameful.”

Going for BrokeMeanwhile, while tax-advantaged savings tools shortchanged the Treasury $369 billion last year, the only governmental program that supports retirement for all employees – Social Security – faces a shortfall that Congress has been warned about for at least 25 years and has yet to resolve.

Social Security will be unable to pay full benefits as of 2034. At that point, the payroll taxes everyone pays will only cover 80% of benefits.

Congress could prevent the catastrophe if it could ever get its act together. Three solutions have been offered by various talking heads.

1. Raise the payroll withholding tax. If you are employed, the current 12.4% tax on payroll is split 50-50 between employee and employer. Raising it to 14.4% would be enough to cover the shortfall and keep the system solvent for the next 75 years.

2. Reduce benefits by 13%. This, too, would cover the shortfall for 75 years.

3. Raise the age of full Social Security eligibility (also a benefits cut). Currently you reach full eligibility at 66 (67 if you were born in 1960 or after). Raising the age to 69 would meet only 20% of the shortfall. (Note that the French raised their pitchforks in protest when President Macron proposed raising the age from 62 to 64. The change happened anyway.)

Another solution that gets less attention but strikes me as the most equitable: Assess the same withholding tax on all wages. In 2024, once you’ve been paid $168,600, any remaining income is not taxed for Social Security. To put it another way, taxpayers earning less than the cap pay 6.2% of their earnings (their half of the 50-50 split), while a taxpayer earning $200,000 would pay only 5.2%. That percentage continues to drop as income increases. Eliminating the salary cap would close the shortfall entirely.

But that’s not even the most radical solution. Alicia Munnell and Andrew Biggs, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, argue for repealing the entire tax-advantaged savings system to shore up Social Security.

Somehow, I don’t think the finance industry lobbyists or their friends in Congress will be keen on that idea.

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The absolute best thing about retirement is the ability to nap with impunity.

When I worked in an office, on most days at some point between 10 am and noon there would come a 15- to 20-minute interval when I would stare at a computer screen without seeing, my eyes unable to focus, eyelids slowly descending, my brain unable to process. I could have spent those minutes to my advantage horizontally, enjoying a quick power nap, but of course no office I ever worked in provided a dedicated nap room, and such a boon to productivity could not even be suggested without some snide comment about kindergarteners. Meetings at mid-morning or after lunch had the same effect – especially those meetings when the lights were dimmed so some equally dim manager could drone on about his PowerPoint presentation. Remaining alert was a losing battle. Fortunately I do not snore.

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But now that I have entered my post-career state, when I feel weariness of body and mind – which occurs regularly between 10:00 am and noon – I have the freedom to listen to my body’s natural rhythms and lie flat for a brief refresher.

I would enjoy this indulgence more completely were it not for worrisome reports that suggest naps may be unhealthy or even dangerous. Unwilling to take this lying down, I have examined the evidence and am pleased to share my findings with you.

The Underlying Mechanics of SleepThe information will make more sense if we first look at the natural sleep cycle.Whether at night or during the day, sleep progresses through stages.

Stage 1, which lasts from 1 to 7 minutes, is the lightest.

Stage 2, which lasts from 10 to 25 minutes, allows muscles to relax and body functions to slow.

Stage 3 is a deeper, more restorative sleep, the kind it is hard to awaken from easily. It usually lasts 20 to 40 minutes.

Stage 4 is Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when dreaming takes place. The eyes move quickly under the eyelids and the body’s muscles are temporarily paralyzed. This period is variable in length. When it ends, the cycle repeats.

What this means is that a short nap will take you through the first two stages only. A nap of an hour or more will transport you through Stage 3 or even Stage 4.

First the Bad NewsExcessive daytime napping may be an indicator of dementia, according to a study by University of California San Francisco, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Yue Leng, a co-author of the study, found that dementia and excessive naps are associated, though it isn’t clear whether napping is the cause or a symptom, or whether in fact the two act on each other. Napping and Alzheimer’s disease “seem to be driving each other’s changes in a bi-directional way,” says Leng.

The study tracked 1,401 older adults, whose average age was 81, for up to 14 years. Those who napped more than an hour a day had a 40% higher risk of developing Alzheimer's than those who napped less than an hour a day. But participants who napped once daily had a 40% higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those who napped less than daily.

Other studies have found links between daytime napping and diseases.

• Napping more than 90 minutes daily is associated with high blood pressure.
• Napping more than 60 minutes a day is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
• Napping longer than 30 minutes daily is correlated with a higher frequency of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
• A nap less than eight hours before bedtime may interfere with nighttime sleep patterns.

On the Plus SideThen again, research based on a study of nearly 3,000 people in China ages 65 and older revealed more optimistic findings. The people who napped for 30 to 90 minutes performed better at word recall and figure drawing exercises, both signs of good cognition, than those who napped for longer and those who did not nap at all.

Dr. Charlene Gamaldo, medical director of the Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center, theorizes that people who take longer naps are compensating for poor nighttime sleeping, which can lead to cognitive problems. Longer naps can pose other problems as well, she says. People may feel groggy upon awakening from a long nap, perhaps because they are awakening from deep (Stage 3) sleep. Long daytime naps may also lead to insomnia at night, she says.

There are other benefits to short (20- to 30-minute) naps, according to doctors at the Sleep Foundation:

• They can enhance alertness, mood, and memory.
• They can reduce stress.
• Napping once or twice weekly is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular problems.

Most of my daily naps fall into the 20–30-minute range – although I do take naps of up to an hour on the weekends and after babysitting the four grandchildren. So on balance, I’m reassured that the power nap has more benefits than drawbacks and is certainly more efficacious than dozing through PowerPoint slides.

But to be on the safe side, have a timer handy to keep your naps short and sweet, and don’t aggravate the risk of insomnia by napping after 3 p.m.

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No. 54/April 10, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Driven to DrinkAlcohol-related deaths among people over age 55 have increased 237% over the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the increase runs …

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Try a quick thought exercise with me: Imagine that you have just been diagnosed with a form of dementia (an umbrella term that includes Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and others). How would you like your friends to treat you?

I ask the question because there is ample material out there for caregivers, and even some material for the afflicted, but only a scintilla of information and advice for friends of the afflicted. And given that most, if not all, of us know friends and family members who have (or had) this scourge, this is a deficit that needs addressing.

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Back to the exercise: I know how I would like to be treated – as if nothing has changed and I’m still the same person I always was – but on honest reflection, I recognize that this is not how I have reacted to others in practice. Once I learn of a person’s dementia diagnosis, my own impulse is to stay away. I don’t want to embarrass myself by saying something wrong or asking an insensitive question. And I certainly don’t want to see a cheerful, intelligent companion reduced to one struggling to formulate a complete sentence.

In other words, I am afraid (and ashamed of it).

Some people, so I am told, cope with fear by whistling a happy tune. I cope by doing more research. What that research tells me is that my fears are not only groundless, but selfish. Friends with dementia, particularly in its early stages, need their social connections to continue showing up for them to help them maintain lives as normal as possible, for as long as possible.

It’s important to recognize that Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are progressive. There is no on-off switch that converts a mind instantly from fully sentient to barely functional. In most cases, this progression takes 7 to 10 years (although it can be longer).

In the early stage, the symptoms are mild and perhaps not obvious to anyone but family and closest friends. The person loses some memory and finds complex tasks more challenging, but retains many of their abilities and requires little assistance.

The symptoms are more pronounced in the middle or moderate stage: the person may confuse words, get easily frustrated or angry, or act in unexpected ways. In the late stage, the person loses the ability to respond to the environment, to carry on a conversation, or to control their movement. There might also be significant changes in personality.

It is in the early stages that keeping up relationships and contact will be most helpful for the dementia patient, and most comfortable for friends. Physicians advise people with dementia to continue doing the activities they enjoy and to remain as independent as possible. Being with friends is a key component in most people’s lives. A dementia diagnosis can lead to greater isolation and loneliness - especially if friends are reluctant to stay in touch.

What Patients SayAsk people who have dementia. NIDirect, the official government website for Northern Ireland citizens, published interviews with people living with dementia about what they needed from friends and family. Some of their thoughts:

• ”Treat us the same as you always have, allow us a moment or two, look at us when you speak, don’t feel sorry for us. All in all, just continue as usual, as we are still the same people.”
• “Sometimes I can’t get the words out. So I tell people I have dementia and ask for help. More often than not, people are understanding and willing to help. I might have dementia but I’m still a human being.”
• “I decided to tell people about my dementia because I want to help stop the stigma associated with dementia. I hope people will give me the same respect and understanding as they would to anyone else. I want people to be more aware of dementia and accept people like me.”
• “I would encourage people to live as normal a life as you can, get out and about as much as possible.”
• “There is life after a diagnosis. Just take it one day at a time.”

Rules of EtiquetteBesides just showing up, friends should keep in mind a few fine points of etiquette when visiting persons with dementia.

• Be patient when your friend has trouble finding a word or finishing a thought. Allow them time.
• Don’t fall into “baby talk,” but do speak slowly. That makes conversations easier to follow.
• Don’t talk about your friend as if he/she is not in the room.
• Reduce distractions such as loud noises or hyperactive children.
• Making simple choices can be exceedingly difficult, so offer no more than two alternatives.
• Ask questions that can be answered yes or no.

In a similar vein, Steven Petrow, the author three books on modern manners, this week suggested four basic rules of “cancer etiquette.” (A cancer survivor himself, he has also written beautifully about losing his younger sister to cancer.) His third rule applies equally well to Alzheimer’s etiquette:

Don’t let denial or fear get in the way of reaching out to someone who is seriously ill. Do not ignore someone you care about because you’re not sure what to say.

How would you like to be treated? Don’t be afraid to do the same for friends and family in their time of need.

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As a person born in the 20th century – who would have been more comfortable in the 19th – I find keeping up with technology to be a perpetual challenge.

This is despite the fact that I am, if not fully tech literate, at least an experienced user. I have been using a desktop computer since 1983, have several social media accounts, publish online, and can work the basics of a smartphone (iPhone 8 or below).

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Still, I am occasionally floored by unexplained mysteries like the following.

Mystery #1My Monday morning routine is to load Canva, an online arts program. A social media consultant opened a free account for me and created templates for me to use for Facebook and LinkedIn posts. When I opened Canva last week and clicked on the Projects link, my designs had disappeared. I tried several other links, tried signing out and in again several times, and nothing worked. I remained in a highly agitated state for four hours.

Solution to mystery: I have two email addresses and I signed in using the wrong one, so Canva created a new free account, which of course had nothing in it. Once I signed in with the right email address, my templates appeared intact. (Why didn’t I think of that?)

Mystery #2Message on Smartphone screen: “Substack notifications.”

I find the Substack app and click it. Instead of opening the app, a new message appears:

“Update required. This version of the app is no longer supported. Please visit the App Store to update. Update App”

I click on Update App, obviously a link, which generates this message:

“App Not Available. This app is currently not available in your country or region.”

It appears to me that I am now in the Infinite Loop of Stupid. But then, how would I know to do what any digital native or 14-year-old kid would do instinctively: Ignore Update App, go to the App Store logo, and download the Substack app. (I figured this out myself in only three weeks.)

Unsavvy at Any SpeedOn the scale of things, these are minor irritants. But it does illustrate a problem: My 20th century brain is not well equipped to navigate ambiguous directions, contradictory directions, and no directions in order to operate tech appliances effortlessly. I assume the digital natives can do this all quite handily. Does that make me hopelessly unfit to operate the high-tech tools that play an ever-increasing role in our lives?

Some people must think so. In November, LinkedIn began featuring a series of advertisements, each ridiculing older adults as hopelessly incompetent with tech. It took LinkedIn until this month to bow to pressure and remove the ads. Hundreds of anti-ageism advocates complained that the ads reinforced harmful stereotypes that make it that much harder for older adults to land jobs – including older LinkedIn users who are on the platform looking for jobs.

Like any stereotype, there is a kernel of truth beneath the sweeping generalization. I doubt I will ever be smart enough to live in a “smart home,” nor have I learned to operate televisions that require two or more remotes to change channels.

Flipping the ScriptBut instead of blaming ourselves for being out of touch, let’s change the perspective. Perhaps the larger problem isn’t with us, but with tech design. Maybe the disconnect is that tech designers, who are mostly young, have created products that fail to accommodate the different abilities of older adults. They don’t mind us buying the products, but they assume that all users are just like them – young, raised in a digital world, with sharp eyesight and steady hands.

Fortunately for the tech industry – and for us – a strong subset of tech folk study and measure usability, which means how easy is it for mere mortals to use the shiny gadgets created by engineers. Lately a growing number of usability experts have criticized the industry for its failure to consider older adults in their product designs.

“It’s astounding to me how much technology we design is exclusionary, difficult, or frustrating for older adults who are a very important part of our population,” says Milena Head, Director of the McMaster Digital Transformation Research Centre at Canada’s McMaster University. For example, many websites are difficult for older users to navigate, yet Pew Research Center reports that three-fourth of adults ages 65 and older use the internet.

Tech companies perform usability studies before they release a new product. However, older adults are rarely included in the testing. “Older adults are often overlooked in the design of [information and communication technologies] and are not considered as active users of technology systems,” says Sara J. Czaja, Director of the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. Age-related changes in sensory/perceptual, cognitive, and motor ability need to be considered, she adds, along with older adults’ preferences.

Just as streets and buildings that meet ADA guidelines for accessibility are more user-friendly for everyone, tech products designed to meet the needs of older adults will be easier for all users, says Megan Chan of Nielsen Norman Group, a pioneer in usability research.

As AARP noted in a recent report on tech trends, “No one prefers badly designed, overcomplicated products.” Despite that, says Laurie Orlov, publisher of Aging and Health Tech Watch, “surveys show that today’s user experience for older adults is more problematic than ever.”

In other words, don’t beat yourself up if the smartphone screen is hard to read, the websites are hard to navigate, or the “easy” instructions leave gaps in their logic. These are flaws, not features. If tech companies want our business, it’s high time they made their products easier for us to use.

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No. 53/Mar. 27, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Thousands Lose Their Homes to Medicaid ClawbacksMedicaid, the state-administered health care program that pays nursing home and home care expenses for qualified low-income adults, is the only public…

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And now, on to our feature presentation…

Who will take care of me when I’m too old to care for myself?

It’s a troubling thought, and one we may not even admit to entertaining. It may be a less frightening prospect for those who have close family living nearby. But for the 20% of older adults who do not – researchers assign them such catchy labels as “solo agers” or “elder orphans” – the future may look absolutely terrifying.

The author of a new book addresses this concern by daring us to consider another alternative to family members: our nearest and dearest friends.

Rhaina Cohen is the author ofThe Other Significant Others: Reimaging Life with Friendship at the Center. She observes that some older adults have pieced together support networks for themselves by relying on friends. By doing so, older adults who need care don’t feel like they’re a burden, but rather just one in a support network of equals.

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The larger argument of Cohen’s book is that friendship has been pushed to the background and kept there by our current culture’s emphasis on romantic relationships. With that emphasis, we also have created expectations that romantic partnerships will fulfill all our needs for companionship, emotional support, and much more. It was not always so. For centuries, marriage was a transaction for financial or political gain, and love had nothing to do with it. In those times, friendships were not only acceptable but publicly praised.

By friendship, Cohen is not talking about good neighbors or carpool buddies, she means deep, longstanding ties, the kind that bind two people together as partners, confidantes, and emotional intimates. She doesn’t give a name to this relationship; the closest I can come is deep or intense friendship – something like best friends with an extra shot of emotional intensity and a heaping helping of shared experience. These friendships can exist even when one or both friends is in a romantic relationship with someone else. Because our culture is more attuned to sex than friendship, outsiders might mistake deep friendships for sexual intimacy, which is rarely the case. Cohen suggests we have lost the ability to see these relationships for what they are, nor can we acknowledge how important they are to our emotional balance.

Count yourself fortunate if today you enjoy a deep friendship of many years’ standing. It is more likely that you enjoyed such a friendship in the past but lost the connection to time, distance, or deference to a romantic relationship, yours or theirs. Inevitably, at this stage in our lives, we also lose dear friends to death.

What Friends Are ForYet as we age, we need friends more than ever before. According to studies by social psychologist William Chopik, friendships predict day-to-day happiness and how long we will live more accurately than spousal or family relationships.

Having friends is also good for our health. One study found that even casual, momentary interactions with friends actually reduce fatigue and stress. It is also well established that a strong social network can delay, if not prevent, mental and physical decline. Studies over many years find that frequent social activity reduces cognitive decline by 70% on average. The National Institute on Aging (NIH) reports that socially active adults have lower levels of an inflammatory factor associated with cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and several forms of cancer. The NIH has also found that strong relationships boost self esteem and increase the sense of fulfillment, which in turn encourage other positive health behaviors.

While it’s never easy to replace deep friendships that have been lost, “It’s never too late to develop meaningful relationships,” says Robert Waldinger, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. In addition to emotional closeness, relationships can provide social support, valuable information, practical help, and ongoing engagement with the world.

“As a psychotherapist, and from my own experience, I have come to know that it is never too late to make new friends,” says Katherine Esty, a prominent activist for aging well and the author of Eightysomethings. “And if you keep on making friends, I can guarantee that you will be happier.”

Tips for Making New FriendsEsty offers several tips for making new friends as you age:

• Reach out and keep reaching out. Don’t let fear of rejection stop you.
• Don’t keep score. My turn-your turn thinking doesn’t build friendship. The person with the energy takes the action.
• Spend time with one person at a time.
• Ask questions.
• Be willing to share and be vulnerable. Learn the skill of self-disclosure.
• Tell people you like them and what you like about them.
• Be open to new friends. Attitude matters most.

Where might you look for potential new friends? AARP offers 10 ideas:

1. Attend religious ceremonies.
2. Connect with groups that share your interests.
3. Take continuing education or lifelong learning classes.
4. Invite people to coffee or lunch.
5. Go on a date (with help from online sites).
6. Join support groups.
7. Join a fitness group.
8. Strike up a conversation with a stranger.
9. Travel.
10. Volunteer or work a part-time job.

We need friends now, just as much if not more than we needed friends in our younger days. There’s an epidemic out there – an epidemic of loneliness. Be sure to inoculate yourself with a few strong friendships to help you through.

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I have been bothered by this whole notion of retirement savings for some time. I strongly suspect it is not mathematically possible for most of us to save enough for a comfortable retirement. But what finally set me off like a blowtorch in a fireworks factory was one line from an article about retirement savings, which read:

According to Fidelity Investments, by the age of 67, people should have 10 times their salary saved for retirement.

What planet are these people living on?

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A reliable source in the financial planning industry assures me that yes, it is mathematically possible to save enough for retirement, if (1) you start when you’re in your 20s and don’t stop and (2) if you’re already making a top-dollar income (which presumably, allows you to stash some of it away).

But this does not apply to those of us living on average, slightly above average, or below-average incomes. For most of us, such an ambitious savings goal is fantasyland. I should know. I was a dedicated saver in the earliest stage of my career. Even on a weekly take-home pay of $110, I squirreled $20 a week into savings. Of course, I lived a spartan lifestyle in those days and my needs were minimal – rent, groceries, gas, and an occasional concert ticket.

The Law of Household NecessityBut those days ended as soon as I married. They say two can live as cheaply as one, but not when one of them aspires to more than a spartan lifestyle. I soon discovered the axiom that I call “Akchin’s Law of Household Necessity, which states necessary expenses always rise to meet or exceed available income. When they meet, no savings. When they exceed, there are credit cards. I offer as proof of this axiom the fact that Americans’ credit card debt reached a record $1.129 trillion at the end of last year.

The effect on savings is also clear. The Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve reported that in 2022, almost half of American households had exactly zero saved for retirement. (Even among those aged 59 and older, 30% still had nothing saved for retirement.) Only 9% had saved more than $500,000.

All of which has led me to conclude that the whole notion of saving for retirement is a big hoax, designed to make us feel inadequate for not achieving impossible goals and guilty for being unwilling to endure 40 years of deferred gratification in order to be financially secure in our old age.

This week I discovered someone else in my corner. Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and professor at The New School for Social Research, says only 10% of Americans ages 62 to 70 are both retired and financially stable, according to her research. The rest are either retired and living below their former standard of living, or still working because they can’t afford to stop.

Ghilarducci’s new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy, argues that the current U.S. retirement system – such as it is – leaves out lower- and middle-income Americans, or 90% of the country. Urging people to work longer, the most popular policy proposal, is a “fake solution,” she says. Her book argues that the nation needs a “Gray New Deal,” a bold initiative that will guarantee that older adults can maintain their living standards in retirement.

Science FictionSo as you scan ads from brokers and advisors telling you about saving and investing for retirement, and your income puts you in the bottom 90% - in 2023, less than $216,000 annually – just ignore them. They are not talking to you. As far as you’re concerned, their projections are science fiction.

You can also stop dreaming of the retirement fantasy I call the pina colada fever dream. That’s science fiction too. You don’t get to have that.

What you can look forward to is working longer, or taking part-time work in retirement, or lowering your standard of living, or moving to an inexpensive Third World country.

It would be great if you could amass a million-dollar cushion, but it ‘s probably a little late for that.

More realistically, here are other constructive activities I can suggest:

1. Pray for the continued solvency of Social Security, which will require an act of Congress (if not an act of God). You can’t live well on Social Security alone (average benefit is $22,000 per year), but it’s great to have it as a foundation.

2. Pray that the stock market defies gravity for the next 20 to 30 years, rather than a nosedive that takes your investments with it.

3. Live within your means. The rule of thumb for living expenses in retirement is 70% of what they were when you worked. Today’s necessities may be tomorrow’s luxuries.

4. Be exceedingly kind to your family members. They may be your caregivers and resources of last resort.

5. Stop feeling guilty about not saving more. It’s not your fault. You needed the money to stay alive. Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain who want you to live in fear and regret.

Or, consider the possibility that you might have a perfectly lovely post-work life without needing a million bucks in the bank.

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No. 52/Mar. 13, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Relationships With Your Adult Children in RetirementKaren Midyet, a psychologist and retirement and longevity coach, notes that relationships with children must evolve at each life stage, and that …

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My cellphone rang. The number appeared to be local, and it wasn’t identified as “spam risk,” so I answered it.

“Hi, Becky from Senior Benefits with good news about final expenses life insurance.”

“Becky” (a recorded voice, of course) had been calling me two and three times daily for weeks and, boorish fellow that I am, I had not given her the time of day. But today, for some reason, I felt long dormant reportorial instincts welling up inside. Perhaps curiosity would lead to an investigative expose.’ Was “Becky” the front person for a massive scam? Was “final expenses life insurance” a ruse to defraud elderly persons who could ill afford to be defrauded? I stayed on the line to find out.

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Having successfully answered two questions – my name and my age – the call transferred to a man with an Indian accent, who asked me a few more screening questions: what state I lived in, whether I had a checking account or a savings account, was I in the hospital, was I on oxygen or a nebulizer.

Apparently, I passed that screening, and I was transferred to Sophie, the agent managing my state, who identified her company as Insurance Supermarket and requested permission to override telemarking and “do not call” rules. Very suspicious, thought I, but for the same of the investigation, I reluctantly said yes.

Sophie asked more screening questions about whether I had cancer, heart problems, lung problems, HIV, or an amputation, and whether my weight was between 99 and 285 pounds. Then the call was transferred to Jack, a “senior life insurance advisor,” who implied that he was a broker working with several companies to find the best deal on a final expense policy.

The InterrogationJack and I talked for 20 minutes. Final expenses insurance, he explained, is a small whole life policy. (It used to be called burial insurance but was renamed when cremation gained wider acceptance.) The premium rates don’t rise, and you’re guaranteed not to be dropped from coverage. The policy pays out in full, usually within 48 hours of the policyholder’s death and is usually the first money the family sees. The idea is to relieve the financial burdens of the family upon death. Jack said funerals and burials today run $15-25,000, and a cremation $5-15,000. Making my spouse the beneficiary of a policy, he added, “is a wonderful thing to do.”

Based on my age, Jack suggested a policy with EMC National Life, a company that has been in business since 1911 and “has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.” Jack then began his own interrogatory, repeating some of the earlier questions but going into greater detail about medical history. I was doing great, able to answer honestly that I had never been treated for AIDS, cancer, heart, diabetes, kidneys, liver, lungs, bone marrow, pancreas, or brain. Then he asked for my current prescriptions. (He also reminded me that the insurer will doublecheck all these questions against my medical records.)

I was sailing through the questions. But then I screwed up. He asked if I had ever been on a nebulizer. In the moment I confused “nebulizer” with “inhaler,” and answered yes. Immediately Jack reported that I had been declined due to my disclosures.

At that point, my fraud investigation collapsed. If this is a scam, wouldn’t they enroll anyone they could? The fact that the company wouldn’t take my money convinced me that it was legit.

(This happens sometimes to investigative reporters. It called to mind my first journalistic investigation, back when I was a 20-year-old college intern on a daily newspaper. There were rumors afloat that a certain charter fishing boat was charging tourists a high day rate but was not going out into the deep waters where the big fish were found. I went undercover on a day trip. That investigation collapsed when I reeled in a 34-pound marlin.)

Is It Necessary?With my curiosity aroused, I did continue researching final expenses insurance to better understand what it was, and whether it was a good product to purchase. Short answer: not necessarily.

Many well-known life insurance companies sell these policies, because they make money on them. Their target market is individuals who lack broader life insurance protection because of their age, their health, or their income. Typical buyers of final expenses insurance are ages 50 to 85 and live on $2,000 or less monthly. The premiums are low, averaging $30 to $70 per month. (For those over 70 with preexisting health conditions, the range is $70 to $120.) For struggling middle- and lower-income individuals and their families, the small death benefit can be a financial lifeline.

On the other hand, if you already have life insurance with a high face value and you are confident that you’ll die with more than $25,000 to your name, then you really don’t need final expense insurance. You get more coverage for your premium dollar with larger face-value policies.

If you are in the market for final expense insurance, do be careful. Every industry has its bad actors, so it’s important to pay attention to certain key terms and how they are defined. It’s also important to read the policy when you get it to confirm that what’s in writing is what you thought you agreed to.

If you do decide to look into a final expense policy, say hello to Becky for me.

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For months I have been having a recurring dream. I am back at one of my former jobs – sometimes as a returning employee, other times as a visitor – and as I look around for familiar faces, I don’t recognize anyone. The workplace itself is different too – more modern, sleeker – and I realize that all my experience is hopelessly obsolete. Two emotions wash over me in alternating waves: first, anxiety that my incompetence will be discovered, followed by relief that I am not really working there anymore so my secret is safe.

I don’t have a degree in dream interpretation, but the meaning of this dream lies right on the surface. It’s about the ambivalence I feel in my waking world: on the one hand, joy at being free from all the workplaces of the past, and on the other, a desperate fear that in retirement I have become irrelevant.

I love retirement, but I am not ready to fade away.

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“When a person retires, does she still exist?” asks writer Brenda Mahler. who noted that society labels people according to their work and their accomplishments. “Apparently,” she writes, “my existence is now defined by what I am not anymore.” Carl Landau calls his podcast “I Used to be Somebody,” although the title is meant to be ironic – Carl interviews people who have launched second or third careers after retirement.

While I may be the only one with this particular dream, I’m certainly not the only retired person resisting his own obsolescence. My mind happens to be blessed with more than its share of ambivalence. I’m delighted to have gotten off the train, yet fearful that the train will roll on and I will be a dusty antiquity – out of sight, out of mind.

From External to InternalThe annals of social science research include many studies suggesting this problem is worse for men than women. “Men are encouraged, and probably to some extent are genetically engineered, to focus on external performance,” writes Josh Gressel, a clinical psychologist. They are not, however, encouraged to explore their internal makeup, and when the focus on career and achievement comes to a halt, men find it difficult to shift attention from externals to such internal concerns as finding a purpose or pinpointing what makes them happy.

What is true equally for men and women, however, is that aging forces us out of familiar roles and into new ones. For decades, we spend our energies in the roles of an employee, a spouse, or a parent, and these identities gave our lives meaning. “When we lose those roles,” says Baylor University associate professor of sociology Markus Schafer, “there can be quite a hole, leaving us to wonder where our significance is now.”

Schafer says it is important to remember that our worth does not change just because our roles do. What older adults must do is find new roles that enable us to be relevant to our communities and our families. Teacher, mentor, and grandparent come immediately to mind.

Tips for RelevancyAlan Heeks, who wrote a book titled, appropriately, Not Fade Away, suggests seven tips to help older adults make fresh choices and learn new skills:

1. Maintain a positive outlook – happiness is a choice that we must make continually, and it includes believing the positives about ourselves.

2. Embrace your fears – instead of battling them ferociously, invite them to tea, have a dialogue, and try to reach an understanding.

3. Create cheerful daily habits – get outdoors in nature often, bring humor into your daily life, and express gratitude for what’s good in your life.

4. Treat problems as adventures – choose to believe that every problem contains an upside, if you can find it.

5. Explore elderhood – connect to the wisdom you’ve acquired through living, and in the wisdom of our ancestors.

6. Be more conscious of your values – choose deliberately to live by them.

7. Cultivate your people skills – at any age, it’s valuable to hone your abilities to express, hear, and work with feelings.

To which I can add a few more ideas that other writers and psychologists suggest:

• Remember, it’s never too late.
• Find something you love and do it.
• Continue to learn.
• Stay flexible.
• Share your knowledge and wisdom.
• Socialize.
• Get a good night’s sleep.If you, like me, worry about fading into irrelevance, may I suggest the cheerful daily habit of affixing these tips to your bathroom mirror?

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No. 51/Feb. 28, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

On Test of Retirement Literacy, Most Score an FWhen The American College of Financial Services quizzed adults ages 50 to 75 on their knowledge of financial factors on retirement – including Social S…

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Growing older comes with more than its share of surprises. One of the most unpleasant is the termination of a marriage. Unfortunately, that nasty surprise faces a growing number of older adults.

The term “gray divorce” was coined and popularized by AARP in 2004 to describe divorces among people aged 50 or older. (More recently, some wag tried to rebrand this phenomenon as “silver splitters,” but the notion died for lack of a second. And rightly so.)

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Regardless of label, it is a phenomenon. The overall divorce rate in the U.S. peaked in the 1980s at 41% and has been steadily declining since then, but the rate for older adults has been heading in the opposite direction. The divorce rate for people aged 50 or older doubled from 1990 to 2021, and for couples over 65 the rate has tripled. In April 2021, the Census Bureau reported that couples aged 55 or older accounted for almost 36% of divorces each year.

Blame the BoomersWhen people try to explain the cause, fingers generally point to the baby boom generation. Preachers and other culture-war veterans are no doubt explaining the divorce trend as the natural outgrowth of the generation’s moral depravity, and anyway what do you expect from people who bought records by The Rolling Stones. But there are other explanations.

• Early to wed, early to walk out – As a group, baby boomers married early. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that 86% of people born between 1957 and 1964 had been married by age 46 – and 45% had been married more than once. Remarriage is a high risk factor for divorce – remarriages have a 2.5 times greater risk of divorce than first marriages, says Susan Brown, co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green University.
• Longer lives, longer marriages. “Til death do us part” was an easier vow to keep when death typically did you part inside of 10 years. One unintended consequence of longer lives is longer marriages, for better or for worse. Many who experience marriage “for worse” may find themselves humming the words to Meatloaf’s biggest hit: “Praying for the end of time/ So I can end my time with you!” For those who can’t wait that long, there’s divorce.
• The stigma is gone. In earlier generations, marriage was a sacred vow and divorce was cause for shame. But with the odds on sustaining a marriage approaching 50-50, divorced men and women (and single parents) are accepted in all walks of life.
• Women have visible means. Raised during the era of women’s liberation, baby boomer women have worked and do not have to depend on husbands for their survival. Divorce is, if not economically desirable, at least economically possible.
• Staying together for the kids. Couples that tolerate a rocky marriage to provide a stable family for the children are ready to move apart once those children leave the nest – generally when the parents are in their 50s.

Financial SacrificeIn financial terms, a gray divorce is a losing proposition for both partners (but a financial boon for divorce attorneys and the housing industry). According to Susan Brown and her colleagues’ research, men can expect a 21% decline in their standard of living after a gray divorce; women can expect their standard of living to drop 45%. Each will see their wealth decline by half. One financial planner remarked that she has never seen a divorce in which either partner is better off financially.

While divorce is costly at any age, the costs of gray divorce are steeper. Here are a few considerations that divorcing couples must confront:

• The house – who keeps it? Who covers the mortgage payments and utilities and property insurance? Is it best to sell it and split the proceeds? Where will each partner live now?
• Retirement benefits – dividing them is complicated by laws and regulations governing these accounts. There’s little or no time left to rebuild savings.
• Health insurance – if one partner was covered by the other’s group policy, they probably have to find individual coverage, at considerable cost.
• Adult children and grandchildren – the emotional costs, too, are high, even in the friendliest of divorces. It presents challenges for the children, regardless of their age. Assigning visiting hours to the grandparents is one of the many minefields of sensitive feelings that must be navigated and negotiated.

Healing and ResilienceThe fact that the gray divorce rate keeps rising, despite the financial disadvantages, tells you that many older adults are willing to sacrifice their standard of living to achieve greater happiness, relief from emotional pain, or a chance to begin anew. Those goals are rarely met instantaneously upon the receipt of the final divorce decree.

“Healing from divorce later in life, especially after a very long marriage, can be particularly challenging due to the unique life changes that come with it,” writes psychologist Ann Gold Buscho. “However, it is possible to heal and find happiness in this new phase of life.” Among her suggestions: accept your strong emotions, maintain boundaries with your adult children, practice self-compassion, and prioritize self-care.

Counselors and psychologists can help adults who have experienced a gray divorce to strengthen and maintain emotional resiliency, something that older adults are more likely to have developed through their experiences in life. “One advantage adults over 50 have is a better perspective, which helps when life throws curveballs their way,” says Susan T. Charles, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine.

If you’re thinking about joining the ranks of the gray divorced, consider your future happiness – but weigh the costs.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

• Last fall the U.S. had 6.5 million unemployed workers but 9.5 million job openings. In manufacturing, health care, education, and wholesale and retail trade, there are more positions open than qualified candidates to fill them.
• A worldwide survey of employers reported that 77% of companies report talent shortages.
• The average retirement age of American workers is 62. More than half of retirees say they retired sooner than they had expected.
• About 11,200 Baby Boomers turn 65 every day. Each worker who retires represents years of institutional knowledge and organizational continuity walking out the door.
• Three out of four current workers in one survey expected to continue working after retirement; in fact, only 30% of retirees actually do.
• Four out of five Baby Boomer employees would like the option of retiring gradually, but only 16% of U.S. employers offer a formal or informal phased retirement option.

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If you can see the problem and the obvious solution, then you must be smarter than 84% of America’s CEOs, who are doing little to stanch the bleeding of highly qualified, highly experienced employees leaving their jobs – often against their will – because company policies require it. Meanwhile these same companies bemoan how many jobs requiring skills and experience go begging.

Something is wrong with this picture, all right. You don’t need an MBA to put together what the numbers are telling you.

1. Many older workers want to keep working.They like working. They like having a place to go every day. They like having other people to talk to. It gives them purpose. And they have seen others who stopped working and didn’t know what to do with themselves.

Also, some older workers need to keep working. A study by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research reported that nearly half of working-age households are at risk of reducing their current standard of living in retirement. They don’t have enough savings to keep them comfortable without a steady income. If forced to retire from their current jobs, they’ll seek part-time or full-time work elsewhere to keep their families afloat.

1. Workers would really like options other than flipping a switch – employed one day, retired the next.Neil Costa, the CEO of a digital recruitment marketing agency, makes a case that “Flextirement” – a word he coined – is destined to be the future. Flextirement would let employees choose to semi-retire, working part-time hours on a key initiative, a specific project, or as a mentor for promising younger talent. His proposal, he says, strikes the balance between the needs of employers and of employees. “The employee receives flexibility to retire in the capacity that works for them, and the employer retains valuable knowledge to be passed on to Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z as well as the company as a whole.”

The response from corporate America? Crickets. At present, says Cheryl Evans, director of the Milken Institute, “the onus seems to be on individuals.”

1. Older workers have a tough time getting jobs because ageism is a real barrier.The same ageism that drives HR directors to force older employees to retire also makes it difficult for older adults who want work to find it. “Just because retired people are looking for work doesn’t mean they’re going to find it – despite strong hiring figures,” says a report from Korn Ferry. It notes that HR executives hesitate to hire older workers because of doubts about their technological savvy. “When we’re 55 or 60, it’s very easy to say, ‘I’m going to work part time,” says Brent Weiss, co-founder of a consumer financial technology company. “But when you’re in your 60s, where do those part-time jobs exist?”

2. Retirement isn’t what people expected. A two-week vacation may be great, a two-month vacation even better, but a 20-year vacation? When most 60-year-olds can expect to live into their 80’s or beyond, a two-decade retirement of leisure and frolic strikes many as a recipe for boredom and dissatisfaction. Those in good health often turn to part-time work, or “unretiring,” to give their days structure and perhaps meaning.

All these factors should send a clear message to corporate America. But to this point, says Michael Clinton, author of ROAR into the second half of your life, the corporate leaders who are paying attention are approaching the issue “with a 20th century mindset when finding solutions requires 21st century thinking.” In particular, he notes, “There’s an institutional and systemic ageism that has been ingrained in corporate policies and it typically begins when employees are in their mid-50’s. The drum beats louder as they move into their 60’s.”

Maybe I should be a CEO.

Oh wait – never mind. I’m past my sell-by date.

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No. 50/Feb. 14, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Memories Fail and Change – At Any AgeIn response to Donald Trump confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden reportedly having trouble recalling the day his son died, the Washington Post …

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Are you fearless? Good for you! I, unfortunately, am not put together that way.

You would think that by now I would have outgrown my fears, most of which date all the way back to my childhood (if not the womb). And yes, I have mastered a few of them, including my fears of wasps, cockroaches, dead mice, and mortifying public humiliation. Sometimes the rational mind prevails.

But let’s be honest. My most crippling fear is totally irrational, and to think that logic and reason can tame it is to seriously underestimate the power of the irrational in the human mind.

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My biggest phobia (a pretentious-sounding Greek word that lacks the savage pithiness of Old Saxon/Old Norse words like “fear”) is of heights. Here is how it plays out: On a family vacation in 1961, my father led me and my sister to the observation deck of a 34-story office building to see the splendid view. It sounded like fun. But once I stepped through the glass door onto the open deck and peered over the edge, I was seized by a wave of dizziness and panic. I did not dare to peer over the edge because I “knew” that if I did, my glasses would fall 34 stories and I, being firmly attached to my glasses, would fall with them. Terrified, I backed away from the edge until I could feel a solid wall behind me, and I stayed glued to that wall while my father and sister took in the panorama. The dizziness dissipated only when I was safely inside the enclosed structure.

I have the same experience in any situation in which I can imagine myself falling. The actual distance of the potential fall is irrelevant. The dizziness overwhelms me at 4,000-foot scenic overlooks, but also on pedestrian bridges scarcely 30 feet above the ground.

The fear is not triggered when I am in enclosed space. In other words, I have no problem flying in a commercial airplane and looking out the window. I can drive a car over long, high bridges with little difficulty, aside from white knuckles. On the other hand, I’ll never fly in a helicopter with one or more sides open to the wind. Elevators are fine; Ferris wheels are pure terror. Rather than becoming less severe over time, the fear has actually gotten more intense in some ways. At present, I can’t watch a video screen when characters leap from an airplane, soar in a hang glider, or perch on the ledge of a skyscraper without feeling queasy and closing my eyes.

As phobias go, my fear of heights is not so bad. Aside from making me unfit for certain amusement park rides and difficult company on adventurous hikes, it doesn’t restrict my life or my enjoyment of it. Other fears can be far more limiting. A person who fears dogs would not have an easy time walking through my neighborhood. Fear of the dark can play havoc on a good night’s sleep. Fear of closed spaces (claustrophobia) can make riding elevators a hellish experience. Fear of needles may impede healthcare.

TreatmentsAre we doomed to be haunted by these fears for the remainder of our lives?

Not necessarily. If your fears are boxing you in and keeping you from fully enjoying life, there are several therapies with good results. The most common treatment is exposure therapy, in which a therapist, in a safe environment, exposes you gradually and repeatedly to the very thing you fear, so that over time it becomes familiar and the fear dissipates. Some therapists combine exposure with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which works to help you challenge and reframe the beliefs that trigger fear. Another treatment regimen is called flooding – instead of introducing the feared object or situation gradually, you are “flooded” with a large volume of triggers for a long time.

In all these treatments – and don’t try this at home without the aid of a trained mental health professional – the objective is to get past the anxiety and panic by forcing you to confront the fear and strip it of its power over you.

I have not sought therapy for my fear of heights. (I have, however, sought therapy for other problems and recommend it.) But if one or more fears is boxing you in and limiting your choices, just know that you don’t have to live under these curses forever.

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People in our generation can take several approaches to climate change. The first is to be grateful that we won’t be around that much longer to worry about it. We can let somebody else worry about it. But that approach is generally considered cowardly, insensitive toward our children and grandchildren, and not especially constructive.

A second approach is to focus on how older adults are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It is a fact that our bodies are less able to compensate for certain environmental hazards, such as air pollution. We also are more likely to have health conditions that make us more sensitive to extreme heat and cold. We are more likely to have compromised immune systems that make us more prone to severe illnesses contracted from insects (Lyme Disease) and water (diarrhea, dysentery, E. Coli). According to a recent article in the British medical journal Lancet, for example, heat-related deaths among adults older than 65 are up 85% compared with 1990-2000.

Finally, we may depend on others for medical care and assistance or may have limited mobility, all of which at us at greater risk in the event of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, flooding, or other extreme weather events.

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While all this may be true, seeing ourselves as vulnerable victims has disadvantages. In particular, it plays into ageist stereotypes of older adults as weak and helpless. “Viewing older individuals only as passive victims of environmental threats is an overly narrow and limiting perspective,” says Dr. Karl Pillemer, a Cornell University professor of human ecology.

That leaves the third approach: actively working to better the environment and to prepare for the new climate realities. “Older adults around the world can be active participants rather than passive actors when it comes to climate change,” says Pillemer, “by mobilizing in large numbers to address local environmental problems through civic environmentalism.”

In other words – stop me if you’ve heard this one – think globally, act locally.

Thinking GloballyOne climate-change organization that encourages older adults to take the third approach is Third Act. Founded in 2022 by author and long-time climate activist Bill McKibbon, Third Act professes to be “building a community of Americans over the age of sixty determined to change the world for the better.” Specifically, it organizes older adult volunteers to become active in national campaigns on a panoply of climate-related issues and voter education efforts. It also encourages members to form local or state working groups to study issues and plan campaigns.

While Third Act deliberately seeks to harness the experience and talents of older adults, Citizens Climate Lobby appeals across generations to “empower everyday people on climate policy.” Founded in 2007, it describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy climate change organization focused on national policies to address the national and global climate crisis.” More than 560 local chapters (including international chapters) help volunteers develop the skills to lobby officials in their state on climate change issues.

Acting LocallyIf lobbying, marching, and writing to politicians are not your cup of tea, there are numerous ways to address climate change closer to home – where you also are likely to see immediate results of your efforts. Environmental groups eagerly welcome older adult volunteers, both for their lived experience and because they have more time for engagement.

Opportunities abound. They include planting trees to shade streets and sidewalks, restoring parks and other green spaces, growing produce in a community garden, monitoring water quality in a watershed, reducing your home’s carbon footprint, composting kitchen waste, promoting recycling, and educating children about the environment.

You can find ongoing projects or like-minded citizens at land conservation organizations, the state’s cooperative extension office, an area nature center or science center, trail maintenance organizations, watershed management group, or through online platforms such as volunteermatch.org. A great site for background information and project ideas is the Aging and Climate Change Clearinghouse at Cornell University,

Helping YourselfWhile most volunteers are drawn to environmental causes by a sense of responsibility for the world and a commitment to leave a better world behind, there’s also strong evidence that environmental activism promotes healthy aging. In a study of older adults who participated in programs to improve outdoor environments, volunteers improved their physical health, improved their mental wellbeing, and reported feeling a sense of purpose.

People who comprehend the urgency and severity of the climate threat often struggle with sadness and depression, says Lawrence MacDonald, author of Am I Too Old to Save the Planet? A Boomer’s Guide to Climate Action. “Working with others to address the threat can help to relieve these feelings,” he says. “We can only free ourselves from our climate culpability by acknowledging it and vowing to do all we can to repair or minimize the damage.”

If you find yourself looking for a new sense of purpose, or if you find yourself with a surplus of time on your hands, know that environmental groups are looking for people like you, and they have important work for you to do.

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No. 49/Jan. 31, 2024NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Classic Board Games Rebooted for All GenerationsThree favorite board games from back in the day have been revived in new editions designed for intergenerational play. The Game of Life Generations, T…

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Plus: A GI Bill for older adults, drug prices, scams, and more.

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I have been assured in many articles and books that as we grow older, we grow wiser. Wisdom is held out as the great consolation prize that compensates for all the pains and losses to our physical and emotional selves.

Well, I’ve definitely achieved the aging part. The beard is turning gray, the eyes and ears are weakening, the digestive machinery is slowing down, etc. etc. So wisdom, wherefore art thou?

More to the point, will I recognize it if it arrives?

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In asking myself these questions, I realized that I would probably not recognize wisdom in myself if it bit me. My concept of wisdom was quite vague – riddles dispensed by white-bearded sages or black-cloaked crones. A mysterious smile accompanied by laughing eyes. Or on a lower plane, homespun sayings from grandma and pawpaw’s rocker.

None of those notions fit me. Nor did they bring me any closer to understanding whether I had earned the promotion from wise guy to wise elder. I decided to do some research to help me assess where I stood.

Every spiritual tradition has something to say about wisdom. So the obvious way to assess my place on the wisdom ladder would be a deep dive into the wisdom literature of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the ancient Greeks, and the Chinese Taoists. Having dipped my toe into most of those waters once or twice, I knew that true understanding involved years of study and contemplation.

But I was in a hurry, so (unwisely) I went to the Internet. I even read several scientific papers, so you wouldn’t have to. And here is what I gleaned:

Pragmatic WisdomThose who try to define wisdom fall into two broad camps. The first camp sees wisdom in pragmatic terms – it’s the accumulated understanding and experience that helps a person handle life’s stresses, adversity, and inevitable losses with resilience, mastery, and compassion. One scientist defined wisdom as “expert-level knowledge and judgment in the fundamental pragmatics of life.”

The second camp views wisdom as the result of reaching the highest stage of human development – a concern for life’s deeper meanings, an acceptance of its uncertainties, an ability to perceive events from multiple perspectives, and compassion for others.

The pragmatic view is the one that has been subjected to scientific rigor. In the 1970s, a geriatric neuroscientist named Virginia Clayton built a definition of wisdom by asking law students, law professors, and retired judges to name what they thought characterized a wise person. From that, she decided the three key components were

1. Cognition – the more you know, the more you can recognize patterns that repeat.
2. Reflection – it’s not enough to know a lot, you also must take time to reflect on what it all means.
3. Compassion – you use the insights you gain to understand and help others.

Building on Clayton’s work, University of Florida sociology professor Monika Ardelt published a study showing that older adults who scored high in wisdom also tended to have more resilience and had a stronger sense of mastery over their lives. The wise, in other words, had the tools to minimize stress and maintain their sense of well-being even in the face of crises and losses.

Higher Love WisdomThe second camp identifies wisdom with self-actualization, the highest level in psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A self-actualized person is free from basic physical and ego needs, as they have already been fulfilled. Another sign of wisdom, according to this camp, is “generativity,” a term used by psychologist Erik Erikson that means to give back without needing anything in return. One example is the grandmother who plants an apple tree that will not bloom in her lifetime, knowing her children and grandchildren enjoy its fruits.

Generativity can take many forms. One of the most compelling is sharing stories with younger generations. “I believe our stories are our final gift to our loved ones,” says Michael Williams, an author, storyteller, and story coach.

There’s one other important notion that came through my limited research: Wisdom is not a gift you automatically receive when you reach a certain age, like Social Security. It’s possible to have wisdom in old age because our brains develop more crystalized intelligence – in brief, we’re better at taking our experiences and connecting them to other problems and situations. But without reflection, we don’t attain wisdom. And all those who have tried to define wisdom see compassion and empathy as essential components.

After letting all the information sift, I still don’t know if I am wise yet. But in the absence of knowing, I am adopting certain behaviors that will improve my chances - and perhaps enhance perceptions of me as wise:

• Listen intently and empathetically and offer no advice unless it is requested.
• If (and only if) I am asked to share my opinion, remember the words of Alex Trebek: “Put it in the form of a question.”
• When rendering my opinion, always wise to keep in mind the truly wise words of Lao Tzu: “He who says does not know. He who knows does not say.”

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What’s Your Joywork?Have you found a project or a new venture in retirement that satisfies your needs? I’d love to hear more about it! Contact me at don@donakchin.com.

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It’s summer’s end, and we are marking the occasion in all the traditional ways: grilling a burger, slicing a watermelon, and broadcasting a summer rerun. This is an oldie but a goodie.

Ashton Applewhite is among the foremost activists calling attention to ageism in our culture and its harmful effects on old (and young) people. She is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. She is also a primary resource for the movement as co-creator of Old School Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse. In this interview, which was first broadcast August 28, 2021, she talks about how where ageism shows up and how we can address our own subconscious ageist attitudes. She also reacts to commonly heard phrases and answers, “Yo, Is This Ageist?”

You can learn more about Ashton at her website, ThisChairRocks.

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We have no problem talking about our physical health. We’re happy to tell you about our new hip, our defibrillator implant, and our gym routine. Get any two older adults together and there’s a good chance of hearing what’s known as an organ recital.

Mental health is another matter.

We don’t like to talk about it with our friends. We don’t even like to talk about it with our doctors – we’re far more likely to discuss physical symptoms, a key reason the data on late-life depression and anxiety are underreported.

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Let’s not talk about it. It makes us uncomfortable. It’s embarrassing. It’s something we fear. You might say it’s the last major taboo.

And while we’re at it, let’s not talk about late-life suicide either. We don’t want to give people ideas.

As long we don’t talk about it, we don’t have to recognize that the highest rate of suicide in the U.S. is among men aged 85 and up. We can ignore the fact that older adults comprise 12% of the population but account for nearly 18% of suicides. And we can ignore the fact that older adults are far more likely to succeed in suicide attempts than any other group – an ironic example of the value of more life experience. Older adults plan more carefully and use deadlier methods.

And as long as we don’t talk about suicide, we can avoid the whole debate over whether older adults should have the right to terminate their own lives in the face of agonizing pain or unbearable loneliness – a term medical ethicists call “rational suicide.”

Why We Hate to Talk About ItWe don’t like to talk about it because mental illness carries a stigma. Yes, in the 21st century, in spite of celebrities opening up about their mental struggles and despite public awareness campaigns to bring mental illness into the light, the stigma remains strong. In a British survey several years ago, people said it would be far easier for them to come out as gay than to admit publicly to mental illness. And with reason: In another study, more than 60% of employers felt they could not employ someone with a mental health problem. Admitting to mental health issues also dooms many romantic relationships.

I know something about this, as I am no stranger to mental illness myself. I have been in treatment for depression for nearly 30 years. That hasn’t kept me from being a functioning, contributing member of society, but it has cost me thousands of dollars in additional life insurance premiums. I happen to think insurance companies, and the rest of us, should be able to make a distinction between treatable conditions like depression or anxiety and severe conditions that lead to erratic behavior or danger to others. But the insurers don’t, and most of us don’t. Our first impulse is to treat anything labeled mental illness with fear, loathing, and avoidance.

But If We Did Talk…Imagine what might happen if we did decide to talk openly and compassionately about mental illness – and in particular, mental illness among older adults.

1. We might combat the widespread belief that depression is a natural part of being old. It is not. According to The State of Mental Health and Aging in America, only 9% of adults 50 or older experience frequent mental distress, which can include depression, anxiety, or severe cognitive impairment. Depression is treatable in 80% of cases. But because of our reticence to talk about it, depression among older adults is widely under-recognized and undertreated.

2. We might change the fact that fewer than half of older adults who need mental health care get it. Professionals are under-trained in treating older adults and therefore avoid treating them, says Regina Koepp, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Center for Mental Health and Aging. Insurance coverage is also spotty. Medicare does not reimburse all types of mental health providers, including counselors.

3. We might weaken the stigma around mental illness. Stigma comes in three flavors: public stigma is negative attitudes that others have, institutional stigma the policies in government and private organizations that limit opportunities for people with mental illness, and self-stigma – the hardest of all to crack – is the negative attitudes and the internalized shame that people with mental illness have about their own condition. Our brains understand that mental illness is brain chemistry and no more the fault of the patient than a bad kidney. Our emotions, however, find mental illness dangerous and a mark of disfavor.

4. We might counter the unfortunate ageist belief that the lives of older adults matter less than the lives of other adults and children. It’s that notion that undergirds the medical community’s lack of interest in geriatric medicine and its lack of curiosity about late-life mental illness and suicide. It’s that notion that dooms many older adults to live with untreated mental illnesses that become more debilitating over time.

5. We might be more outraged at the high numbers of suicides in nursing homes, assisted living centers, and adult care homes. When frail older Americans manage to kill themselves in institutions designed to keep them safe, secure, and supervised, we could ask questions about whether those institutions are paying adequate attention to mental health risk factors.

6. We might spread the word about the new national suicide prevention hotline (Dial 988 or https://988lifeline.org), launched a year ago, which links people in crisis or concerned friends, family, and caregivers to counselors providing free, unbiased, and confidential support 24/7.

7. We might learn the five action steps we can take if we know an older adult considering suicide:

8. Ask if you can help, in a supportive and nonjudgmental way.

9. Be there, to ease feelings of isolation and provide a sense of connection.
10. Keep them safe. If they have a suicide plan in mind, try to remove the necessary tools.
11. Help them connect to support systems.
12. Follow up. Be sure to check in with them.

Or we can just not talk about it. Ever.

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[Note to subscribers: While I am on a brief vacation, I am reposting a past column. Don’t worry: the summer rerun season at The EndGame is short.]

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My mother-in-law is amazing. Helen turned 90 in December. Thanks to her training as a professional ballerina and her addiction to daily movement, she is remarkably fit. She lives in a senior living community, but she hasn’t developed many close friendships there. “They’re not interested in things I like to do - music and art and dance,” she says.

For those activities, she can turn to a large circle of younger friends – people in their 50s and 60s, mostly – whom she has known for many years and who happily include her on trips to concerts, the ballet, plays, and restaurants. “I have amazing, lovely friends,” she says. “A couple of them always call to check in on me and see how I’m doing.”

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Many of her friends are people she met when she first moved to Cincinnati in the mid-1970s. Looking for ways to integrate into her new hometown, she taught dance in a community center and in private studios. She counts a number of former students among her current friends. “Teaching kept me connected with people who were vital, who loved doing what they were doing,” she says. “That connection meant everything to me. I was new to the city, and they helped me get acquainted.”

As age begins to put limits on what we can do - whether it’s driving at night or taking long walks – its great to have friends who can help us out. Friendships don’t just happen; they require steady investments of time and attention. As with other investments, the best time to start is 20 years ago. But the second-best time is now.

Late-Stage HelenismMaking younger friends and staying connected to them has paid off handsomely for Helen. It is a coping strategy I have offered to label Late-Stage Helenism, in her honor. However, some sociologists got there first and have slapped on it the label “multigenerationalism,” which is far harder to spell but more likely to stick.

These sociologists see America as a society segregated by age as much as, if not more than, segregated by race. They say it is an unhealthy development for all concerned. Elders are blocked from nurturing a younger generation, an activity that is important to their happiness and sense of purpose. Separated and warehoused out of sight and out of mind, they are treated as superfluous beings long past their sell-by dates. Meanwhile the young, who have little contact with elders, also have little regard for them and dismiss them as having no useful talents or experiences to offer them.

A fledgling movement has taken on the ambitious agenda of bridging this generational gap. One of its leaders is Marc Freedman, CEO of Encore.org and author of several books on the topic. His most recent is How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations. Another key player is The Eisner Foundation, the only U.S. foundation investing exclusively in intergenerational solutions.

This spring Encore.org and The Eisner Foundation partnered with the Stanford Social Innovation Review to publish a series of essays called “Meeting the Multigenerational Moment.” Topics have included a number of innovative ideas: Raising foster children in multigenerational communities, intergenerational classroom support, age integration in higher education, co-locating childcare and eldercare programs, tackling the housing crisis through home-sharing, and solving the loneliness epidemic. You can find the essays at https://ssir.org/meeting_the_multigenerational_moment.

Who Wants Age Segregation?While their movement hurls its slings and arrows at the long-term trends of American society, let us not forget that the vast majority of older Americans don’t particularly care for age segregation either. It wasn’t our idea.

As my mother-in-law puts it, “It’s discouraging to live in a place like this where everyone has a walker. I don’t like to be around older people.”

We’re also not convinced that our useful days are past. We’re not superfluous. We still have more to do.

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[Note to subscribers: While I take a brief vacation, I am reposting a column from the past. Don’t worry: the summer rerun season at The EndGame is short.]

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I like to think I am smarter than the scheming scammers who prowl the Internet. The evidence says otherwise. I’ve been duped, more than once.

Last month, for example, I received an innocuous text from a friend. “How are you doing today?” It seemed impolite not to reply, so I texted back, “Just fine. Nice to connect with you.” Whereupon my friend shared some great news. “I got $200,000 from the government grant program who are helping the retired non retired students old disable widows deaf and dumb in the community.” Okay, I thought, that’s weird but still possible. And the grammar is messed up, but really, who types well with their thumbs? But then she continued: “I think you need to check this out by contacting their claiming help desk. Do you know how to do that?”

Finally the red alert signal fired in my brain. I picked up the telephone and called my friend. “By any chance, did you recently get a $200,000 grant?” I asked. “Honey,” she said, “if I did, I wouldn’t be here answering this phone!”

I had been suckered in by identity theft. But see how easy it is to fall for it?

The Help Desk That Wasn’t That scam didn’t cost me anything. A few years ago I was not so lucky. While cruising the Internet one Friday late afternoon, a pop-up exploded onto my screen, accompanied by the blaring of air-raid sirens and a booming voice telling me my system had been seized by spyware. I tried to escape the pop-up but found my screen was frozen. I turned the computer off and on – an action the pop-up specifically warned me against – but still the frozen screen and the alert came up immediately. Frustrated and desperate, I called the telephone number on the screen for technical assistance. The tech staff, who spoke with thick Indian accents, said they could only find the problem if they linked my computer to their system. Reluctantly, I agreed. For five hours that evening they worked it over, deleting the invasive viruses and reinstalling everything until they declared the problem fixed, in return for which I paid the princely sum of $499. The next morning the computer wouldn’t start at all and I was back on the phone breathing fire. Five more hours on the operating table, and finally my computer awoke, like its old self.

A few weeks later I was explaining this to my friend, the networking guru. “Oh, no, you didn’t,” he said.

“Uh oh. Was it a scam?”

“Absolutely,” he assured me. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“My mistake,” I mumbled.

To pour extra salt on the wound, I have received several dozen phone calls over the past two years from persons with a variety of accents, offering to refund my money. I listen – until they tell me the only way they can pay me is if I will let their computer link up with mine. “No way,” I say, and share a pithy piece of hard-earned wisdom, the family-friendly version of which is, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Only they don’t get the family-friendly version. That is when they hang up.

Apparently scammers circulate a list of names and telephone numbers that have been lucrative strikes for them. My name must be on the list in big bold letters with a gold star that means “Here be stoopid.”

Why am I telling this? Only to emphasize that the scammers are getting smarter. If even an educated, sentient, technologically semi-literate gent, wizened by age and toughened by worldly experience can get taken for an expensive ride, it can happen to any of us.

The Latest and Greatest Scams Scamming seniors is a growth market. A 2015 report estimates that seniors lose $12.5 billion to scams annually. Scammers love us because we’re polite, we’re trusting, and sometimes we’re so lonely that we fall into conversations with these scumbags before we realize we’re being tricked. They also know how to play on our worst fears.

Here are some of the current favorites to look out for:

• Your grandchild has been arrested and needs bail money sent by wire transfer or prepaid card. (This is particularly frightening and emotional. Federal agents in Baltimore last week broke up a ring that used this scam to bilk at least 70 seniors of $1.5 million.)
• Your Social Security number has been suspended because of suspicious activity, and your benefits will stop if you don’t reactivate your number. (The real Social Security Administration never reaches out by telephone.)
• There’s a problem with your Medicare account, which requires a fee to fix. In some variations, you must sign up for Part D to keep your other benefits - as if Medicare wasn’t confusing enough already! (And again, Medicare employees don’t pick up the phone to call you.)
• You’ve won an all-expenses paid stay in the Caribbean. We just need your credit card number to reserve your place. (Not to be confused with the semi-legitimate free trip in exchange for sitting through a two-hour sales pitch for a timeshare.)
• Amazon is about to process your recent purchase for $499, unless you respond within 24 hours. (For the record, the real Amazon would not hesitate to process the charge.)
• Get the cash from your reverse mortgage and invest it in an annuity, or a real estate venture. (Reverse mortgages are a legitimate tool, but a plan for reinvesting the equity is a four-alarm signal flare that something’s fishy.)
• The perfect sweetheart you met and courted over the Internet needs money to take care of her pet’s emergency surgery. (Good rule of thumb: Don’t trust the photographs. Your romantic interest on the Internet probably lives in a basement in Turkmenistan and weighs 400 pounds soaking wet.)

These are just a few. You can check out a more exhaustive list at “Common Scams That Target the Elderly. ”

Investment ScamsInvestment scams are a whole category unto themselves. Often the targets are high-wealth individuals, but scammers are equal-opportunity sleazebags who have been known to siphon off a senior’s life savings. There are as many variations on the schemes as there are tax loopholes. The Securities and Exchange Commission has a brief report on the latest fads in fraud (and the dangers of following hot tips on social media) here.

If you’re worried about an elderly relative falling prey to a smooth-talking scam artist, Consumer Reports has helpful tips to stop fraud.

As they used to say on Homicide, “Let’s be careful out there!

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In the summer before my senior year of college, I had the inspired idea to become a syndicated columnist. By that point in my academic career I had compiled enough credits that I could take light loads in my final two semesters. So, I thought, why not take advantage of a relatively relaxed year to jumpstart my writing career?

My plan was to offer a weekly humor column to college newspapers around the country. No one else did that, so perhaps there was a niche waiting for me to fill it. I spent the summer combing through a directory to compile a list of more than 1,000 newspapers – this was 1972, so the directory was a library reference book and the compilation involved pencils and paper. Then I photocopied several humorous pieces I had written for my own college paper a thousand times, wrote a generic letter of introduction, and stuffed and stamped a thousand envelopes.

Just before unleashing my arsenal of guided missives, I got cold feet. To settle my nerves, I sought the advice of my mentor on the journalism faculty. I revealed the strategy to him and asked, “Do you think I should try it?” He looked me in the eye and said, “If you don’t try it now, you’ll always wonder whether you could have succeeded.”

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Taking that advice to heart, I launched the venture and enjoyed limited success. My column appeared on four other campuses, and my total investment of $60 netted me $48 in revenue. This experience gave me the confidence that led me later to launch two more startups that lost far greater sums.

I tell this story not to explain my instincts for entrepreneurship but to highlight my mentor’s good advice. Who needs a lifetime of regret for actions not taken? My experience tells me it is better to try and fail than to regret not trying.

Risky BehaviorsThat has never been truer for us than now, in the autumn of our lives. Common wisdom asserts that older adults take fewer risks than younger ones. Whether that’s really true is unclear – there are studies that confirm it and other studies proving the opposite – but regardless, here’s what ought to be true: At our age, we should feel empowered to take risks to experience the life we want.

Here’s why:

We have less to lose, for starters. With any luck at all, we don’t have kids depending on us for their next meal and intensive counseling. With any luck at all, we don’t have to worry about the impact on the course of our careers. That ship has sailed.

And we really, really don’t have to worry about a potential failure destroying our good reputation. To that point, my long-time friend Patricia Shearer sent me this critically important insight, psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen’s 18-40-60 Rule:

When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.

To which I add my own rule: Once past 70, nothing embarrasses me.

We’re not talking about big risks, anyway. I’m not suggesting you invest your retirement savings in penny stocks or send thousands of dollars to help release a member of the recently dethroned Nigerian royal family. I also don’t recommend skydiving, although former President George H.W. Bush chose to celebrate his 85th birthday by jumping from an airplane at 10,000 feet. More power to him.

We’re talking about little risks, the kind that involve taking a step outside the comfort zone. If you stay securely inside your safe space for another 30 years, you’re likely to find it boring, stifling, uninspiring, and your brain will turn to mush. Plus you may regret what you didn’t do. Studies consistently show that our biggest regrets are not over things we did and wish we hadn’t, but over the things we chose not to do. The research tells us if we want to avoid future regrets, take chances.

Risk-taking offers a cluster of psychological benefits. It gives us the opportunity to change our lives for the better, to capitalize on possibilities we never imagined, to learn new things, to develop new skills. It can help us build confidence, feel more engaged, and feel pride in an accomplishment. It spurs us to be creative.

Taking calculated risks is also an essential trait of humans. As Dr. Rochelle Perper notes, we are descendants of people who dared to take risks to survive in a changing environment. It’s in our DNA.

I Challenge You So I will go out on a limb (but it’s okay because I’m over 70 and can’t be embarrassed) and challenge you: Take a chance.

If you hate to travel, take a trip. If you always wanted to play the piano, sign up for lessons. If you always wondered about that intriguing-looking person at the coffee shop, go over and start a conversation. If you always wondered whether you could be an artist, pick up a pencil and a sketch pad.

The alternative is to spend your remaining years wondering if you could have, if you should have, if you would have. So take a step - a small step for you, maybe, but one giant leap for your happiness.

I’ll give you (and myself) a month. Then let’s compare notes on our risky behaviors.

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In their new book Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain, Emily and Mitchell Clionsky explain that we can control much of the risk of contracting dementia. Emily, a physician, and Mitchell, a neuropsychologist, offer important insights in this informative interview about things we can do to prevent dementia. Among the topics covered:

• How to distinguish between normal aging and serious mental impairment.
• Why eating the right foods is not the most effective prevention tool.
• Half the people correctly diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment can actually get better - or at least, no worse.
• A five-minute assessment tool can diagnose dementia - or reassure you that you haven’t got it.
• The value of getting diagnosed early.

The book is available from the Johns Hopkins Press.

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I have avoided writing on this topic for months because this publication is about the positive aspects of aging. There is little positive to say about the cost of our final days. While this is not a new problem, it is a problem that is getting worse by the day. The one positive, I hope, is in helping you prepare for the financial shocks that are sure to come.

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With rare exceptions, every one of us would prefer to die in our own homes and in our own beds. The industry label for that is “aging in place.” Looking at ourselves today, functioning rather well in good health, we can scarcely imagine why we would not, or could not, age in place.

And yet – only about 5% of us will be privileged to shuffle off our mortal coil in the comfort of familiar, familial surroundings. The rest of us will spend some of our final days in one or more institutions.

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None of them is cheap. If you worry about the high cost of living, wait until you get a whiff of the high cost of dying.

Let’s break down the institutions.

If at some future date you (or your children) decide your house is too much for you to manage, you can elect to join a “senior living” community. That’s the market-friendly name. A more accurate name is an “elder ghetto,” since these facilities effectively segregate older adults from the mainstream of daily living.

An Independent Living unit is for you if you can fix your own meals, dress yourself, shower, and take care of other “activities of daily living.” Should you need help with two or more of those, your next likely step is to Assisted Living, which includes meal services, housekeeping, and help from healthcare workers. If and when your needs become more intense – and require more aid – you may find yourself in a Nursing Home, unless you have developed dementia and need to be placed in a Memory Care unit.

A facility that includes all or most of these steps of care and allows you to transfer from one to the other is called a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC). The fees rise with the intensity of care.

What it costsThe best source for cost data is the Genworth Cost of Care Survey, which not only provides state-by-state information but even offers a tool for calculating costs in future years. All the figures I am presenting are Genworth’s national medians for 2021, the latest available, except as noted.

According to the survey, the median annual cost for a private, one-bedroom apartment in assisted living care is $54,000. (This compares favorably with the $54,501 sticker price for a year of private college education, including room and board. However, four years of assisted living doesn’t earn you a degree.)

For memory care, the average annual cost is $83,220 (from AARP study, 2021).

For a semi-private nursing home room, the annual median is $94,900; a private room is $108,405.

Suppose you opt instead to receive care in your home, and it is more than a family caregiver can take on. The median annual cost for homemaker services is $59,488. For a home health aide, the price is $61,776.

Divide those costs by the amount of your retirement savings and you’ll get an idea of how many years of declining health you can afford.

And that’s just today’s prices. You can be sure they will go up for a couple of reasons. One, because they always do. Two, the senior care industry is operating with severe staffing shortages – we’re talking 400,000 workers – and clearly, substandard wages are part of the problem. Third, the wave of baby boomers is creating greater demand than the industry can supply, which guarantees prices will rise.

Who pays?Medicare, to the surprise of many older adults, does not cover long-term (non-medical) care. It covers inpatient care in a hospital and short, inpatient stays in a skilled nursing facility. It also covers some at-home health care services. But the rules limit reimbursement to what is medically necessary. Non-medical services in Independent living, assisted living, at home, or in a nursing home – anything classified as “non-skilled personal care assistance” – is on your dime.

Long-term care insurance is designed to cover some expenses not covered by Medicare. If you already have a policy, good for you. If you don’t, it’s probably too late.

Medicaid, which is designed to help low-income households offset the costs of long-term health care, is managed 50 ways by 50 states. Generally, to be eligible a recipient can have no more than $2,000 in assets (not counting a home and a car). Not all facilities accept Medicaid. It is not uncommon for nursing home residents to spend down all their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid.

How to PayIf your retirement assets are less than seven figures, you might want to start planning your escape from impending financial doom. Some strategies worth considering include renting your home, getting a reverse mortgage, cashing in life insurance, veteran’s benefits, annuities, and pooling family resources.

The bottom line is this: the senior living industry has created a system designed for a well-heeled clientele. There are few options for middle-income families who are too rich to qualify for subsidized care (such as Medicaid) but too poor to afford most institutional care.

Something is badly out of whack.

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Has Your Transition Been Bumpy? Let’s Talk About ItI want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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No. 31/ May 10, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

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Ageism has been called the last socially acceptable prejudice. While most people think twice before mouthing statements that might be considered racist, sexist, or homophobic, no such taboo stops people from uttering words that are offensive, demeaning, or dismissive of old (or young) people.

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It doesn’t help that in a culture that worships youth, age bias is so pervasive that it is almost invisible. It also doesn’t help that older adults themselves fall into thinking and speaking ageist thoughts about themselves (such as “I’m too old to learn something new”).

Anti-ageism activists argue that we must confront ageism wherever it rears its head. The way to change an ageist culture, they say, is to change assumptions, one mind at a time. Rather than sit silently when a person makes an ageist remark or an ageist joke, use the opportunity to call out the ageist assumptions that underlie those utterances.

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But what do you say?

Glad you asked! After today, you’ll have no reason to be speechless in the face of insulting or hurtful remarks. Here for your convenience are a range of comebacks you can use in the most common situations in which ageism occurs. I have arranged them in three styles of approach.

Three Approaches1. Polite Correction (PC): Experts agree that this approach is most likely to make a speaker realize the inherent ageism in their remark and reconsider it in the future. PC responses draw heavily on the excellent work of Changing the Narrative, a public awareness campaign aimed at ending ageism. 2. Firm Rebuttal (FR): This approach can also be rendered politely, but it has more edge. This is the approach of hardline activists, chief among them Ashton Applewhite, who want to assure that ageist speech is confronted and resisted. 3. Inner Groucho (IG): This approach does absolutely nothing to encourage constructive dialogue, but it might make you feel better. It’s the comeback you wish you might have made, had you thought of it at the time.

Doctor: “It’s normal to feel exhausted at your age.”PC: I know many people my age and they aren’t all experiencing this. Can you please help me find answers?

FR: Can you explain what you mean by that?

IG: I didn’t feel this way last week. I must have aged quite a lot in a week.

(Doctor ignores you, addresses a third person in the room.)PC: You can speak directly to me. My (friend, daughter) is here to support me and I will let them know if I need their input.

FR: Excuse me. I’m right here, and it feels like you are talking about me rather than to me. (hat tip to Louise Aronson)

IG: I was under the impression that I was the patient. Hello? Am I invisible?

Nurse: “Sweetie, let’s take off your jacket so we can take your blood pressure.”PC: Thank you for the sentiment, but I prefer to be called (Linda, Bob).

FR: When you say things like that, I feel like you’re treating me like a baby or a mentally incompetent person.

IG: Oh honey, you’re so cute I just want to pinch your rosy cheeks!

Acquaintance: “How are you, young man?”PC: I’m fine but I’m afraid I have to report you to the Aging Police. (hat tip to Phil Moeller)

FR: We both know I’m old. When you pretend otherwise, you suggest that being old is a bad thing, and it’s not. (hat tip to Louise Aronson)

IG: Your eyes must be failing. Get your prescription checked.

Acquaintance: “You look good for your age.”PC: Did you mean that as a compliment?

FR: Why would you say that? (hat tip to Ashton Applewhite)

IG: Yes, we vampires hear that all the time. (hat tip to Erica Manfred)

Recruiter: “You may be overqualified for this job.”PC: This job is a great fit with my experience. I have a proven record of success.

FR: I’m sure you don’t mean to say I’m too old, since that would be illegal age discrimination.

IG: In other words, you’d rather hire an incompetent than someone highly qualified to do the work?

Acquaintance: “I’m glad to see you’re still up and around.”PC: Thank you, I guess. I suppose you mean that as a compliment.

FR: I’m glad to see you’re still up and around too.

IG: Yes, the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. (hat tip to Mark Twain)

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Has Your Transition Been Bumpy? Let’s Talk About ItI want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Michele Maggiora, an artist, poet, feminist, mystic, and lifelong adventurer has lived among indigenous peoples and learned first-hand how elders are honored and revered in their cultures. In particular, she shares the true story of an event celebrating her entering her “ultima epocha,” or final stage of life. She shares her perspectives on what learning from other cultures could mean in the way Americans treat older adults. The interview also includes:

• Observations about Okinawa, an island noted for its many centenarians, and what makes that longevity possible.
• The importance of having a purpose late in life.
• Why we need to question the deepest roots of our American culture.
• The importance of staying connected to the earth.

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I have been a grandfather for more than ten years and I still don’t know what I’m doing. If there is a how-to manual on how to be a grandfather, it must still be at the printer because I haven’t seen it. And I’ve looked.

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When I became a father, at least I had a role model to emulate. My father wasn’t perfect, but he taught me what I needed to know, showed me how to treat other people, gave me a firm moral compass, and showered love on me and my siblings as well as he knew how.

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With the grandfather role, I was less fortunate. My one living grandfather was a hard man to get along with, much less to love. Paralyzed on one side by a stroke, he was rude, gruff, loud, impatient, and demanding. His temper flared often and unpredictably. Among other endearing habits, he liked to remove his dentures at the dinner table and place them in a water glass.

He did read me a book once, a memorable experience. It was the tale of a lonely woodcarver who created a wooden boy for companionship.

My grandfather read aloud, “‘I know!’ said Gepetto. ‘I will call him PiNOTCHio.’”

“It’s PinOKEEo,” I corrected him. I was well educated in the field of televised Walt Disney productions.

“PiNOTCHio!” said my grandfather sharply. “I’m reading and I say it’s PiNOTCHio. Do you want me to read it or not?”

I relented, because at that moment it was more important to be read to than to be right.

In fairness, my grandfather indirectly ignited the spark that became my future career. He lived with us for three years, and in his room he kept two fascinating artifacts: A black Royal typewriter, on which he occasionally blasted out letters to the editor, and Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, a tome so huge that it had to rest in its own stand. My first attempts to put words to paper took place on that Royal typewriter, and if I was ever at a loss for a word I knew precisely where to look.

That aside, my grandfather’s example gave me little useful knowledge about being a good grandfather, other than providing a model to avoid.

Scarce ResourcesThere is ample material about grandmothers, and about grandparents generally. The grandfather is the forgotten man. One of the few people who has given their role serious thought is James S. Bates, a professor at Ohio State University. He contends that society’s expectations for men have evolved from the strong, silent Marlboro Man to a male with feelings and compassion. Grandfathers’ roles, he argues, similarly have been in flux. Bates proposed a conceptual framework he calls “nurturant grandfathering” and then had the decency to climb down from the ivory tower and publish a series of fact sheets with useful, practical ideas about specific roles grandfathers can play. Among them: Nurture and shape a grandchild’s character and personality traits, reinforce strong familial bonds by example, and teach grandchildren about their family history.

Two additional resources on grandfathering have popped up recently. Good Grandpa is a blog by Ted Page, a marketing consultant who noticed the dearth of advice for male grandparents. His blog tells stories from his and others’ experiences. There is also a podcast, Cool Grandpa, hosted by Greg Payne, an IT project manager. The podcast features interviews with grandfathers and subject matter experts.

When you turn to grandparenting generally, there are innumerable sources, from academic studies to websites. Two impress me the most. The Long-Distance Grandparent by my friend Kerry Byrne, a guest on The EndGame podcast last year, has tons of good advice that is both practical and research-based. She also curates a community of grandparents who share ideas with one another. The Grandparents Academy offers more than a dozen online courses on everything from cultivating values to the rights of alienated grandparents.

I have gathered many promising ideas from these resources. Providing a positive moral example appeals to me. So do sharing family history and helping to build a safe, secure family structure. While I work out in my head exactly how to do those things without being a pedant, a bore, or a grumpy old curmudgeon, I suppose I will keep grandfathering in the only ways I know how: Listening with my full attention, being silly whenever possible, and letting each grandchild know that I love them unconditionally – just because.

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Has Your Transition Been Bumpy? Let’s Talk About ItI want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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No. 30/April 26, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

ChatGPT Does Not Know What It’s SayingThe words a human speaks reflect the experience of being in a human body. ChatGPT doesn’t have one, and that is why its well-parsed words may follow correct fo…

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This week I learned a new word – “polypharmacy.” I also learned that I could be a poster child for it.

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Doctors define polypharmacy as the regular use of five or more medications. It is a common situation among us chronologically gifted folk because many of us take medicines for two or more chronic conditions.

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This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it can be. Multiple medications are absolutely necessary for some conditions, but the greater the number of medicines we ingest, the higher the safety risks.

When multiple medicines cause a patient more harm than good, polypharmacy becomes “medication overload.” The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, argues in Its 2019 report, Medication Overload: America’s Other Drug Problem, that Americans are experiencing an epidemic of medication that is particularly harmful to older adults. According to the report, more than 40% of older adults take five or more prescription medicines daily, and 20% take ten drugs or more.

But before I lob any metaphorical firebombs at the medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, I feel obliged to be fully transparent about my own regimen, which illustrates the problem. Here is the complete catalog of my daily meds:

Prescription:

4 pills for depression/mood disorder

1 pill for cholesterol

1 pill for hypertension

1 inhalation for asthma

Non-prescription:

2 pills for multivitamins

2 pills for calcium/Vitamin D

1 pill for nasal congestion

1 inhalation for allergies

Depositing 7 prescriptions and 13 total drugs daily into my body certainly qualifies as polypharmacy, but is it medication overload? Keep reading, then you decide.

The Safety IssueThe safety problem is that each additional medication increases the risk of suffering a serious, possibly life-threatening side effect. We’re not talking nausea or dry mouth; we’re talking delirium, impaired cognition, internal bleeding (including bleeds in the brain), and falling.

Medicines are chemical compounds, and some chemicals just do not play well with others. Many harmful drug interactions are well documented, and alert physicians and pharmacists know to avoid them. Yet in spite of that, over one recent decade, serious adverse drug events sent older adults to emergency rooms or other treatment 35 million times, according to the report. People over 65 suffer disproportionately – at only 14 percent of the population, older adults account for 56% of hospitalizations for adverse drug events.

The Lown Institute report offers some credible explanations for why this happens.

Fragmented Health SystemIf you only see one doctor for all your health needs, you should not have medication risk. (And if you do, you know who to blame.) But that’s highly unusual. More likely, you see specialists for specific conditions. Each specialist treats your particular condition separately, often without knowing your full medical history, other conditions you have, or other medications you’re taking. The older we get, the more likely we are to have multiple chronic conditions and multiple doctors. (Even mixing in over-the-counter meds with prescriptions can wreak havoc.)

The risks multiply whenever a patient transitions from a hospital to a rehab center or nursing home. Drugs that were prescribed during the hospital stay for short-term, acute conditions may be continued long after they are appropriate. A full medical history may not be understood by the (understaffed and overworked) personnel of a long-term facility. The patient has no advocate in coordinating the medications of multiple specialists. As a result, patients frequently end up taking more medicine than necessary, and running more risks of adverse drug reactions.

Prescription CultureWe live in a society convinced that there is “a pill for every ill.” Aging is treated not as a natural process but as a disease, and death is the failure to cure it. We are also a society exceedingly fond of instant results. Resolving a problem by taking a pill is easier and faster than making long-term lifestyle changes.

These tendencies have been exacerbated by decades of pharmaceutical advertisements that imply a cause-effect relationship between taking prescription drugs and blissful, pain-free living. The industry spends more than $20 billion annually marketing to the medical community, and another $6 billion advertising directly to consumers. (The U.S. is one of only two countries that permit the latter.)

Information GapsAfter several decades of working out the kinks, electronic medical records have achieved their primary purpose: efficient billing. Recording and sharing clinical information on patients, however, is often less than smooth. Patient confidentiality is one of many obstacles to allowing access to all medical personnel.

There are also gaps in what is known about medication overload, and particularly for older patients. One reason: Older adults are rarely invited to participate in clinical trials for new drugs.

Age MattersAll other reasons aside, there is another reason medication overload impacts older adults disproportionately. It is normal as we age for lungs, kidneys, and liver to work less efficiently. In short, our metabolism slows, and it takes longer for a dose of medicine to work its way through our system. What was a safe dose for years may increase the risk of adverse drug reactions as our bodies age.

The Lown Institute report argues that physicians must do more deprescribing – reducing the load of medications in patients by stopping medicines that are no longer necessary, or were never necessary, or were not beneficial. Also, the report notes, deprescribing needs more attention in medical and pharmacy education.

The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement are also attacking the medication overload issue through their joint Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative.

My Bottom LineIn spite of taking 13 prescription and over-the-counter drugs every day, I consider myself pretty healthy. I am lucky that my two prescribing doctors are both in the same medical system and have full access to my electronic records. Both are good about taking a big picture view of my health. I haven’t had any adverse drug reactions – yet.

But if that changes as my internal systems continue to rust, I will be prepared.

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Has Your Transition Been Bumpy? Let’s Talk About ItI want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Berit Lewis has come to understand mindfulness on both an intellectual and an emotional level. In her new book, Ageing Upwards, the Danish author explains how she came to study mindfulness and what she believes it can do for everyone - and especially for older adults. In this interview, she discusses:

• How she learned that she and her thoughts were not the same.
• The difference between the true practice and “McMindfulness.”
• How mindfulness helps older adults accept the changes that come with age.
• Why we must change the narrative that aging is all downhill.
• Why we cannot always change things but we can always change how we respond to them.

You can learn more about Berit Lewis and order a copy of her new book at her website, https://thrivinglife.eu.

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Photo by Ashley Rich on Unsplash

One day last week, the high temperature reached 75 degrees and it was time to bring out the short sleeve shirts and short pants. That was immediately followed by a two-day cold snap with highs in only the 40s, and it was back to long pants and overcoats.

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That’s the way winter transitions to spring in the Mid-Atlantic – in fits and starts. You don’t know what to expect from day to day – or even from morning to afternoon – so you had best observe carefully and be prepared to make the necessary adjustments.

Most transitions in my life also have consisted of fits and starts – two steps forward, three steps back. It seldom feels as if I am moving in a direction, yet eventually I find myself in a different place from where I started. In the same way, winter eventually plays itself out and spring emerges triumphant.

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I would much prefer winter to depart punctually and finally on March 19 and spring to unpack its bags the next day. It would allow me to maintain a more efficient closet. But that is just not how the seasons operate. Nor, in my experience, is that how our most significant life transitions play out.

What Comes After WorkThe fits-and-starts pattern particularly characterizes the major life transition from full-time work to that state formerly known as “retirement” and which I prefer to call “The AfterWork.” I have interviewed dozens of people in recent months about their personal experiences of the transition. A few say it was smooth sailing – they could hardly wait to kiss work goodbye and have no regrets. A few others say they can’t let go of work and may keep at it as long as their health allows them. Many – perhaps the majority – cheerfully took the leap into The AfterWork but encountered surprises and difficulties that made their transition bumpy and complex.

For those who stake their identity on what they do, the leap was more like a dive into a drained swimming pool. “My husband’s self-esteem has always been cued externally,” a semi-retired woman told me. “He had big deal jobs, and the day he retired, he lost that. He started to lose his confidence, and he felt irrelevant. I did not like how he looked or how he seemed.” (After several years, she reports, he found his happy place by joining three boards and staying busy, “and he’s just so much happier.”)

Others said they wanted to do something different in The AfterWork but weren’t sure what it might be. And some had plans that crumbled or at least were put on hold. Ambitious travel plans yielded to the worldwide Covid pandemic. A couple’s plan for a second home collided with one partner’s declining health. Aging parents suddenly required more care. A life partner died.

Nearly 50 years ago, sociologist Robert Atchley proposed that the typical transition to retirement was a five-stage affair:

1. The honeymoon – when retirees rejoice in their new freedom and free time.

2. The disenchantment – the emotional letdown as they face the reality of everyday retired life.

3. The reorientation – when retirees develop a realistic view of their opportunities and constraints.

4. Stability – when people adjust to retirement.

5. Termination – when retirees lose their independence because of illness or disability.

What’s Different NowThe main thing that has changed in the intervening 50 years is longer lifespans – and longer healthspans – for many who stop working. With the prospect of 30 to 40 more years ahead, perpetual golf and pina coladas lose their allure. What has not changed is that many adults – perhaps as many as one-third – find it difficult to navigate the transition.

Perhaps we’re not well prepared. “Retirement planning” has been treated as a synonym for financial planning, but that leaves out the necessary emotional and psychological adjustments – including, according to one sociologist, “partial identity disruption, decision paralysis, diminished self trust, experience of a post-retirement void, the search for meaningful engagement in society.…”He goes on, but you get the idea.

Wouldn’t we love to skip all that? Hell yeah! Had we our druthers, we would go for instant metamorphosis. If we could, we would even go straight from caterpillar to butterfly and skip the intermediary step.

Tempting, but not necessarily wise. It’s worth remembering that the caterpillar’s chrysalis is more than her short-term rental. It’s also her personal gym. She works out her fledgling wings by doing pushups against the chrysalis’s walls, and miraculously, when the wings are strong enough for flying, they’re strong enough to push Madame Butterfly out of the chrysalis and into the next stage of her life.

We will undertake many transitions in our later years in addition to the passage from work to The AfterWork: Changes in health, changes in our partnerships, changes in relationships with our children, changes in our outlook on the world. Sometimes the transition will be in progress before we realize it. Sometimes it seems to take forever with no forward momentum. From talking to those who have been there, I suggest these lessons: Be patient. Don’t give up. Don’t take shortcuts. Transitions may not be smooth, but they are always necessary and – more often than not – highly rewarding.

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Has Your Transition Been Bumpy? Let’s Talk About ItI want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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No. 29/April 12, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Some Foods Go to Your Head – And Not in a Good WayPeople who eat the most ultra-processed foods – including burgers, hot dogs, French fries, sodas, cookies, doughnuts, frozen pizza and other ready-…

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Two rapidly accelerating trends approaching from opposite directions are about to collide like a couple of lovesick asteroids. The impact of that collision will influence your future and mine.

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One trend is the continued growth in the number of older adults. Another 10,000 Baby Boomers reach the traditional age of retirement each day, and that pace will not slow for at least eight years. By 2050, the ranks of elderly Americans will swell to 84 million.

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The other trend is the deepening shortage of healthcare workers available to take care of those older adults, including you and me. A healthcare consulting firm’s study predicts a shortage of 400,000 home health care aides and 29,400 nurse practitioners by 2025.

Where are the Helpers?Nearly all of us will need help from healthcare workers in our final years, which is why the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects home health and personal care aides will be the fastest growing job category in the nation, growing 33% in the next decade. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of those jobs are unfilled today and will likely be unfilled in the future, barring any major changes in the healthcare industry. The work is hard, the pay is low, the prestige is negligible. New immigrants filled many of these jobs in the past, but current U.S. immigration policies sharply limit the number of new immigrants. Current policy favors highly skilled workers; entry-level health care jobs are classified as low skill.

Some policymakers want to loosen the immigration rules. Others want to raise the pay and prestige of health care workers (which would also make their services more expensive. But given that all-American zest for inventive, creative approaches – especially those involving technology and promising to reduce labor costs – healthcare and tech companies are turning enthusiastically to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to save the day.

With generous research dollars from government and universities, tech companies are researching and bringing to market a wide range of products that promise to help older adults. This growing sector, known as AgeTech, has first concentrated on tools to help older adults remain in their homes longer. We already have censors that detect when someone falls, but now AI tools also predict falls in advance. We have Alexa and her sisters to answer our questions, but with more AI, we have robotic companions that tell stories, sing, or offer to play games. An AI improvement on the “nanny cam” monitors an older adult’s movements and sounds an alarm if the movements deviate from their normal pattern. There are devices that not only monitor vital signs but use algorithms to predict declines in health and enable early medical intervention. In addition to home use, heathcare facilities are employing AI tools to compensate for their shortage of staff to monitor patients.

The tools come in many formats. Some are stand-alone robots, the most advanced of which move their arms when they talk (Italian style). Others are portable and wearable devices such as watches, or even smart implants. On what is now the leading edge, really ambitious designs are augmenting smart homes with hubs and monitoring systems.

Still a Few Bugs in the SystemMy first reaction to these shiny new tools is a hearty Gee whiz! Unfortunately, there are problems with operating these AI devices in a world of real human beings. The first fundamental issue is as old as computing itself: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Specifically, some of the intelligence in AgeTech products doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of older adults.

The World Health Organization issued a policy brief in February warning that data used to develop AI tools may be skewed by ageist stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. This shouldn’t be surprising - a recent study of 96 academic publications about human-robot interactions found a prevailing view among researchers that old people are fragile, cognitively impaired, barely mobile, and incapable of social interaction. Tech designers rarely seek out the opinions of the older adults for whom their products are allegedly targeted.

When designers do ask older adults, the feedback isn’t always what the techies want to hear. In a focus group with older adults and their caregivers in Italy, a fancy French companion robot got decidedly mixed reviews. In Japan, an American company recently introduced a wearable device that detects eating motions, but they failed to calibrate the device for people who eat with chopsticks.

Getting It RightIf the present trends continue, we can expect to interact with robots and AI-enhanced devices as we proceed down the home stretch. To receive the best care for ourselves and those we love, we need to demand that AI technology factor in the preferences and experiences of real older adults – not ageist stereotypes – in creating the machines that will watch over us, alert us, and tell us bedtime stories.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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In her book Climbing Down the Ladder, Laura Black describes coming face to face with The Void - the great unknown once she had walked away from her company. Laura shares in this interview about:

• The nearly simultaneous shocks of experiencing “retirement,” the empty nest, and the declining health of her parents.
• “Who am I without a business card?”
• A near-death experience that opened her to a different perspective.
• The freedom of having nothing left to prove.

You can learn more about Laura Black and her book on her website, laurablack.net.

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When did you first notice you were invisible?

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Was it the first time you tried to speak up in a meeting and someone younger talked over you?

Was it when you stood in line at the bank, waiting for the two tellers to break from their chit-chat and finally offer to help?

Was it when the waitress pretended not to notice you seated in her section for 30 minutes?

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Was it when your adult child rejected your best advice by saying, “Maybe that made sense in your day, but it’s different now.”

At a certain age, we don’t need Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak to feel unseen, overlooked, or irrelevant. Younger men and women gladly perform that service for us, gratis.

Women will tell you the invisibility is worse for them, and they are probably right. Paula Marie Usrey, for example, who appeared on The EndGame podcast several months ago, has written a useful book for women in midlife called Refusing to be Invisible. In an online reader poll of older adults, 64% said older women are more invisible than men of the same age. According to the same poll, women start becoming invisible at about 52, while for men it happens around age 64. The difference is usually attributed to that potent combination of ageism and sexism. To be blunt, women who are perceived as unattractive are ignored, and in this culture, young is a critical component of the definition of attractive. Entire industries – empires – are constructed on the belief that older women can only be taken seriously if they maintain their attractiveness indefinitely.

But invisibility and irrelevance are hard pills to swallow for men and women those of us who identified ourselves as leaders, decisionmakers, strategists, partners, and wise counselors, only to learn that “out of sight, out of mind” applies in the work world. Once you step off the career train, it keeps rolling down the line with your former friends, colleagues, associates, and clients aboard. Somehow that world goes on without you, as though you were never there.

Part of a TransitionPerhaps we should expect this as we age. As Markus Schafer, a University of Toronto professor of sociology notes, the feelings of irrelevance happen at the same time we lose familiar roles – at work and at home. The work changes or disappears. Friends become distant. The children flee the nest. The spouse want to revisit old tacit understandings. It was in playing those familiar roles that we found visibility, relevance, and meaning.

In other words, it isn’t you that’s no longer relevant; it’s the roles you once played.

I have mixed feelings about invisibility and irrelevance. Sometimes I resent them, other times I revel in them. I have not resolved in my own mind how best way to respond to this new fact of life. From my own reading and numerous conversations with peers, I believe there are four viable ways we can react:

1. Fight it- “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Insist on your continued relevance and fight like hell to retain it. Stay current with new technologies and new developments in your industry. Keep learning all the time. Team up with younger colleagues to get fresh perspectives. stay current. Team up with young uns. Keep learning.

2. Accept it – “That’s the way the world goes ‘round.” Acknowledge that it’s time for the torch to pass to a new generation. Acknowledge that you are no longer playing that role any longer. Enjoy the freedom that comes with irrelevance.

3. Find new roles. “The resolution of all the fruitless searches.” Since the old roles no longer bring you recognition and relevance, find new roles. Look for other roles where you can be an important player – as a grandparent, for example, or as a volunteer. New roles can make you newly relevant.

4. Go inside. “Try to realise it's all within yourself.” Consider the possibility that your feelings of invisibility or irrelevance are invitations to detach from the external world and seek to understand your interior world more fully. Read. Seek a teacher, a coach, or a therapist to help you navigate. Some contend that seeking wisdom is the true purpose of our final years.

Are we truly invisible? The better question is, invisible to whom? You may be invisible to your former work friends, but to the child you shower with encouragement and love, you may be a rock star.

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No. 28/ March 29, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Housing: Stuck in the MiddleOlder adults whose income is too high to qualify them for subsidized housing, but not high enough to afford most retirement communities, are in a tough spot with few ho…

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Yes, I did it. After a successful 50-year campaign to avoid athletic injuries by avoiding all athletics, I took a first step toward fitness. To do it, I had to overcome a crippling fear – the kind we now would label PTSD – of gymnasia in general and men’s locker rooms in particular. It was in the middle school locker room that I first experienced pure anarchy, the lawless state that occurred whenever the coach left his young wards unattended for more than five minutes. The strong became predators, the weak and the small became prey, and the normal aromas of sweat and moldy socks were tempered with the powerful scent of testosterone run amuck.

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What finally trumped my fear of the gym was an even stronger urge – the fear of falling. I am approaching that age when a fall can be not only painful but the first step in a cascade of bad to worse health outcomes. I have seen it happen often enough among those in their 80s and 90s. I have even seen people my own age fall and need months to recover fully. My reading (most recently, this sobering piece) has convinced me that falls are the indirect result of weakening muscles and deteriorating balance. I decided it was time for me to move from athletic avoidance to fall avoidance by undertaking strength training.

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To be totally honest, the “gym” I joined is actually a wellness center, attached to a rehabilitation facility and next door to senior housing. This appealed to me, because there’s an excellent chance I’ll be the youngest person in any fitness class. But first things first: I needed a fitness assessment before I could do anything.

The Fitness AssessmentThe assessment consisted of me moving through a dozen or more short exercises such as walking as if I had been stopped for a DUI, standing up from a chair repeatedly, standing on one foot, arm curls, and more. I thought I performed rather well. That isn’t what the assessment showed. In five exercises I rated “below normal,” and three of those scores were noted as “a fall risk.”

Okay, so at least my instincts were correct and I joined for the right reason.

Based on the assessment, I was paired with a personal trainer named Russel for eight weekly sessions of what should be labeled Remedial Strengthening: Jell-O Molding. In our first session Russel had me walk back and forth across the training room while he observed.

“Your feet are too close together,” he said. “You want them to be hip width or shoulder width apart.” He then demonstrated a wide stance walk. I recognized it immediately. It was the jock swagger. All the high school football players walked that way, as if to say, “Howdy partner, I just stepped off my horse,” or more likely, “I have to walk this way to give my super-sized package more breathing room.”

“And notice your left foot,” said Russel. I looked down. My left sneaker was turned out at a 35 degree angle. “You lean to the left.”

I said, “No one who knows me would be surprised by that.”

He asked me if I did sit-ups regularly. I assured him that I did. “Show me how you do them.” Lying flat on a mat, my legs bent at the knees and feet flat on the wall, I interlaced my fingers behind my head and did a quick five. Russel was not impressed.

“I’ve been doing these daily for years to tighten my abs,” I said. “Are they doing any good at all?”

“Not really,” said Russel. “Except maybe strengthening your neck.”

Slow ProgressRussel is different from athletic coaches I knew in my youth. For one, he is not sadistic. Also he has a sense of humor, and he meets me where I am, not where he thinks a normal fit person ought to be. In other words, he is patient and willing to go v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

He also assigns homework – exercises I can do at home. In the first week, three sets of sit-ups (the right way), three sets of standing pushups against a waist-high counter, and marching (in a wider stance) while carrying weights. All that three times a day, with two days of rest. In week two he added squats with weights.

Russel also recommended I take a protein supplement. “These exercises burn up calories,” he explained, “and you’re going to need extra protein to build up muscle.” Two scoops of protein powder mixed with water – just like baby formula – and drunk once daily. My wife thinks drinking a protein supplement qualifies me officially as a gym rat.

By our third session, Russel said he was already seeing improvement. “Really?” I said. “I just feel sore all over.”

“Check yourself out in the mirror at home,” he said.

I looked in the mirror. I still can’t see much change, except for one thing: My belly is not sneering at me. In fact, it is staring back at me with a newfound respect, as if to say, “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

Well, yes. Yes I am.

If anyone had suggested a year ago that I would spend an hour a day doing strenuous exercises, I would have asked what they were smoking. But I did some calculating. If I continue to spend as much time on these exercises for 20 years (being optimistic), it adds up to more than seven solid months of my life. It might be a colossal waste of time. But if it helps me add a year or more – maybe several more – to my health span by helping fight the ravages of gravity and entropy, it will be a sound investment. And not a moment too soon.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Jennifer Rovet, owner of Retire Ready Canada, is among the youngest retirement coaches on the scene, and she thinks that her positive energy, excitement, and creative approaches to retirement are a definite asset. In this interview she discusses things that make the retirement transition difficult for some, the difference between coaching and therapy, and the value of planning ahead.

You can read more about her coaching practice at https://readyretirecanada.com.

(And if you listen closely, toward the end of the interview you will hear Jennifer’s talented cat practicing his putting on the hardwood floor.)

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What got me thinking about satisfaction with life was a report by Fidelity International (of Australia), which found that elderly Australians were generally more satisfied with their lives the longer they had been retired. That got me thinking about satisfaction, and how we know when we’ve reached it.

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Satisfaction is not the same as being happy, according to those who study these things. As social scientists define the terms, happiness is that momentary joy you feel at a particular moment in time. It’s delightful, but it’s fleeting. Satisfaction is the overall sense that your life is sailing in the direction you want it to go. It’s a stable, longer-lasting emotion – more like happiness in a time-release capsule.

Social scientists agree that satisfaction is subjective, and one man’s satisfaction may be another man’s hell. They even acknowledge that subjective experiences are hard to define and harder to measure, but that hasn’t stopped courageous social scientists from trying to do both.

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The broadly accepted view, according to the positivepsychology.com website, is that satisfaction falls into four categories:

1. Your life chances – circumstances influenced by the society you live in, your wealth and social status, family bonds, and personal mental, physical, and psychological fitness. For example, were you born on third base and convinced that you hit a triple?

2. Your life events – challenges you may confront in life, positive and negative, that cause you to lean toward greater or lesser satisfaction. Did you win most of your battles? Did life beat you up a lot?

3. Flow of experience – your feelings and responses to what happens, including yearning, anxiety, loneliness, and rejection on the negative side of the scale, or love, safety, excitement, and rapture on the positive.

4. Your evaluation of life – your assessment of all these factors, how you compare your life to your conception of “the good life,” and whether you’re more an optimist or a pessimist.

And This Matters Because…?Naturally, when we are highly satisfied with life, we tend to be happier and enjoy life more. Beyond that, research has shown that life satisfaction and health are closely related. If one improves, the other follows, and the same in reverse. Another study has found that a high level of life satisfaction even correlates to a reduced risk of mortality.

But how do you know if you’re satisfied? To me, it seems obvious: You just know. But I am not a social scientist. Social scientists develop tools to measure things. The first popular instrument was a five-statement assessment called the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), created in the 1980s. There’s also the Life Satisfaction Index, which has 20 questions, and other scales developed more recently.

According to these tools, older adults generally have higher satisfaction with life than other adults. That’s good to know. But the research breaks it down further.

Meanwhile, Back in Australia…The Fidelity report that first attracted my interest in life satisfaction looks at older adults in four segments: pre-retirement, semi-retirement (working part-time in anticipation of full retirement), early in retirement, and late in retirement (retired for 10 years or more). The least satisfied of the four are the pre-retirees, mostly because they are stressed about retirement finances. In general, life satisfaction increases as people move through retirement. What was a major factor in one stage becomes less significant at another stage. Satisfaction with health declines with age, as might be expected, but retirees also give it less weight than before. Veteran retirees report high satisfaction with other aspects of their lives – connection to community and family, sense of control, high confidence, and positive experiences day to day.

The only segment more satisfied than the experienced retirees is the semi-retirees, who are bullish on their health, their sense of purpose, and every other measure except wealth.

The report was written for financial advisors and emphasizes that wealth and health – the dominant discussion topics between planners and clients – are not the sole measures of satisfaction, nor even the most critical ones. Further, it presents evidence that what matters to clients most changes, depends greatly on where they are on their life journeys.

How You KnowFor myself, I feel quite satisfied. No debts, few responsibilities, strong marriage, successful children, happy grandchildren, good friends, good health, enough to eat, and a purpose that keeps me eager to get out of bed each morning. That’s not to say my life is not without its irritations and aggravations. I’m not happy every minute. But I’m content.

If you’re not sure whether you’re satisfied, you can always ask a social scientist. But based on their evidence, the best thing you can do is keep aging. It gets better and better.

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No. 27/ March 15, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Why Older Women Have “Gray Affairs”A foremost scholar of female infidelity, author Susan Shapiro Barash, says women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s seem to be joining their younger counterparts in havi…

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From time to time, I feel a sharp tingling sensation down my left leg that may well be my sciatic nerve. I used to react to the tingling with concern, but these days I just apply my 48 Hour Rule: If it still bothers me in 48 hours, I’ll do something about it. In nearly all cases, the pain has disappeared by then, and I forget about it.

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In my 60s I was less cavalier about pain, to put it mildly. I suffered through repeated flare-ups of low back pain. At their worst, I walked slowly and carefully to avoid muscle spasms. I could only walk short distances without discomfort. Over four years, I made enough weekly physical therapy appointments to qualify for frequent flyer miles. There I was treated to muscle manipulations, warm packs, acupuncture-style needles, and a few injections of anesthetic. My condition would improve, then relapse, then improve. The pain moved around quite a bit.

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I might still be on the table, had not one of the physical therapists mentioned a book called Mind Over Back Pain. The author, an M.D. named John Sarno, claimed that the source of most back pain was not physical but psychological. His suggested treatment was to work through the emotions and stress that caused the brain to send out pain signals. I read the book, and suddenly I had an entirely new perspective on my pain journey: My physical pains were tightly interwoven with my emotional state. Within a year, the pain was gone and it hasn’t returned.

By the way, in 85% of chronic back pain cases, doctors can find no physical cause.

False AlarmsSarno’s book was published in 1982. Since then, medical science has concluded that he was right in general, if wrong in the specifics. With 40 more years of research into the workings of the brain, the more nuanced view is that all pain is real, but all pain originates in the brain. And sometimes, particularly when it comes to chronic pain, the brain sends out false alarms.

Here is how I understand it (and those with medical training, please chime in if I get something grievously wrong): When I stub my toe, the nerve endings in my toe send a signal to my brain along the lines of “Urgent – incident reported, possible damage. Please advise.” Part of my brain’s mission is to protect my body from harm, so if it determines the stubbed toe is a threat – and if there has been tissue damage, it probably will – then it sends an urgent alarm signal back down through the nervous system to my toe, which I experience as sharp pain.

“One of pain’s most important jobs is to grab your attention and get you to change your behavior,” says Rachel Zoffness, a pain psychologist at the medical school of the University of California at San Francisco, and co-author of The Pain Management Workbook. (You can hear her discuss the science of pain in an excellent podcast interview with journalist Ezra Klein.)

The Emotional ComponentBut scientists now believe the same neural circuitry that sends physical sensations to the brain is the same network that communicates thoughts and emotions. So when my brain reacts to a stubbed toe by sending me a pain signal, I might respond with an “ouch,” but I am equally likely to respond with a thought such as “I’d better stop to have a look,” or an emotion such as “Oh my God, I can’t walk!”

This helps explain the problem with chronic pain – defined by the medical community as pain that persists for more than three months. The brain’s instant alert system works brilliantly for acute pain. But when a painful condition continues, the instant alert system is prone to overreaction. Some scientists believe that the more frequently the brain processes pain, the greater its sensitivity to pain. As a result, with a long-term injury it remains on high alert all the time – regardless of whether the tissue damage that triggered the initial alert has improved or even healed.

Emotions also factor in. Your perspective on pain has a strong impact on how you experience it. “Negative emotions are like gasoline thrown on the fire of pain,” says Beth Darnall, a pain psychologist and associate professor at Stanford University. Surveys have shown, for example, that patients suffering from depression are between three and four times more likely to develop chronic pain. Stress and anxiety turn up the brain’s pain dial to a high setting.

What chronic pain sufferers need, first, is a way to reset the brain alarm from high alert to a more neutral setting. Medication is one way to do that. With chronic conditions, though, medicating runs the risk of dependency and addiction.

A New Treatment ApproachA new treatment method, called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), works on the emotional and psychological connections to pain in order to reprogram the brain. PRT teaches patients to perceive the pain signals sent from the brain as less threatening. Therapists also work on helping patients manage the emotions that may make pain feel worse.

In the first randomized clinical test of PRT, two-thirds of patients who underwent therapy reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free after four weeks. The reductions in pain mostly held up a year after the treatment.

No, you shouldn’t believe doctors and family members who say the pain is “all in your head.” It isn’t. But paying more attention to the emotions and stresses in your head may be the most promising avenue for relieving the pain.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Author, speaker, podcaster, and entrepreneur Isabel Alexander knows how difficult it can be to leave a familiar career for the unknown. As CEO of The Encore Catalyst, she draws on her own experience of building and then leaving a successful business to train others who are making a mid-life or late-life transition. In this interview, she shares a number of ideas, including:

• The number one obstacle that keeps people from reaching their dreams.
• How unprepared most people are for the life after working.
• The surprises that nobody plans for (or can plan for).
• Her methodology for scripting, staging, and starring in your new life adventure.

You can read more about Isabel at her website, https://theencorecatalyst.com

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The month of February is still visible in the rear view mirror, yet in our household I already hear the steady drumbeat for spring cleaning. Beyond brooms, buckets, and mops, spring cleaning is accompanied by a call to arms: Let’s dispose of all the junk!

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Junk is in the eye of the beholder. You say junk, I say keepsake. I say junk, you say heirloom. Although we did a commendable, and necessary, job separating ourselves from heaps of flotsam and jetsam when we downsized from a 2,700-square-foot house to a 1,400-square-foot apartment, apparently we’ve continued to accumulate in the intervening 16 years.

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Some of these surplus possessions are not our fault. We have become the designated repository-of-choice for our children’s high school and college textbooks, shelving components from my sister-in-law’s studio, even one grandfather’s cremated remains. In each case, disposal must be preceded by delicate diplomatic negotiations with other parties who would just as soon not come to the table.

Trash vs. TreasureAll that aside, we do need to come to grips with dozens of unread books, old client files, broken lamps that might someday be repaired, and extra sets of linens. Eventually we will be forced to discuss the heirloom china, silver, and crystal that we hope to pass down to children who have shown no interest in them.

However unpleasant the prospect of de-junking, our burden is minor. The people who really have it bad are those who help their elderly parents downsize or, worse, are forced to sort through the possessions of deceased parents.

My friend Michelle Spiziri, who owned a concierge service that helped households organize, recalls some horror stories. Sometimes she had to declutter the homes of people who couldn’t throw away anything, until the clutter made it hard for them to navigate their living space. “I would try to convince someone that if it’s been in a box for 20 years, you don’t need it,” she recalls. Her advice: “Start eliminating little by little, years before you think you need to, and don’t accumulate more stuff.” (You can hear my podcast interview with Michelle Spiziri about her subsequent career as an artist.)

George Carlin also had some “choice” words on the topic.

There are numerous articles on the internet that offer advice on decluttering. Frankly, many of them could have been written by ChatGPT and are not especially helpful. They approach the subject from a rational, step-by-step process. What they fail to consider is that disposing of stuff is not rational. The emotional connections we attach to objects is what makes the process so painful. It’s not just a poster; it’s a reminder of a wonderful vacation. It’s not just grandmother’s tea set; it calls to mind fond memories of her. It’s not just a musty book; it’s a collector’s item, passed down through three generations - so far.

Objects vs. StoriesIn her book Squint: Re-visioning the Second Half of Life, Margit Novack relates a story about loaning a friend her mother’s cake plate, and learning that the cake plate had broken. She tells her friend, “It belonged to my mom, who died, and it’s one of my favorite things.” Then she adds, “But my mom is in my heart and my mind, not in a cake plate.”

Novack continues: “The thing is, if I want my children to know their grandmother, they won’t learn about her from a cake plate. They will come to know her from stories that I share….Who she was is communicated through stories, and if the stories are passed down, the possessions become immaterial.” (You can hear my podcast interview with Margit Novack.)

Think about those stories as you try to separate the keepsakes from the disposables among your stuff. When we retain the stories, we don’t need the physical objects.

For additional suggestions and guidance about stuff disposal, the PositiveAging community offers a one-hour video with four members of an organizing firm addressing the issues. Two popular books on the topic are Downsizing: Confronting Our Possessions in Later Life, by David Ekerdt, and Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, by Matt Paxton.

Here’s wishing you a successful good riddance.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

The EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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No. 26/ March 1, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

“Age-Friendly” Jobs Increase, but Age-Friendly Hiring is Another MatterA research study by three economists found that about three-quarters of all occupations in the U.S. were made “age-friendly” b…

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Several people I have been talking to lately insist that the post-career years are an excellent time to reinvent oneself. Retirement coach Karen Midyet discussed reinvention in a podcast interview we had earlier this month. Paul Long also made a strong case for reinvention in this week’s podcast.

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Reinvention may sound hard and complicated. It smacks of a laboratory or a complex engineering project. So I won’t use that word. Instead, I’ll talk about the pivot. It may help to think of it as a dance, like one of those new dances that bubbled up every other week in the early 1960s, a minute before the Beatles. (Here’s a soundtrack, courtesy of Little Eva.)

Hey now have you heard about a brand new dance now,

We’re doing the pivot, you should give it a chance now,

Just press down on your heels, move your toes to the left,

Now pivot to the right and now you know all the rest,

So come on, come on, give your life a turn for the best!

(Sorry, just had to get that out of my system.)

You may know the dance moves. If your life has been anything like mine, you’ve had to do the pivot more than once.

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I made my first pivot at age 11. Four years before, I had contracted a severe case of authoritis and made up my mind that I would write books. My mother threw cold water on the idea, reminding me that writers didn’t always make a lot of money and to think instead about a steady paycheck. So I pivoted to journalism – it was a job that paid a salary, but I would be paid to write. That pivot worked out well for a while. After 10 years of school newspapers, internships, and a journalism degree, I spent another decade writing for newspapers and magazines.

Then my wife (also a journalist) and I put location before profession. We moved to Baltimore and looked for any jobs we could find. My pivot took me into the business of writing reports and marketing materials for universities, hospitals, and foundations – a field that carries the label marketing communications. (Similarly, my wife’s pivot led to jobs in corporate communications for hospitals and universities.)

Pivot MasteryI won’t bore you with my torturous career path, but the upshot is that I made several more pivots, usually when my job reached a dead end. Twice, when I seemed to be terminally unemployable, I opted for self-employment. By the time I transitioned from self-employment to self-retirement, I was a seasoned pivoter.

Pivoting is always a test of resiliency. Sometimes pivoting is also about survival. When technological change decimates your industry or renders all your wisdom and experience unnecessary, when a personality clash make your job untenable, you pivot to something new if you have the necessary resiliency to bounce back.

But after your work life is over, pivoting is an entirely different matter. Your back is not against the wall. At this point, you no longer bear the weighty responsibility of your family’s survival. A burden like that squeezes the fun right out of it.

A post-career pivot can be just for fun. Everything doesn’t hang in the balance. The pressure is off. We have the freedom to take risks on things that just might not be practical. And if they don’t work out, so what? They were useful experiments. We can try those things that we dreamed of doing but had to abandon because of family obligations. We can pivot towards the passions we reluctantly put aside.

You’ve Got TimeBesides, the retirement you planned on may look nothing like the retirement you get. For starters, it could be incredibly long. You may have another 30, maybe even 40 years left after you step back from your career. No matter how much you’ve saved, will it really be enough to keep you comfortable for 40 more years? In short, you’ll need to do something. Why not pivot to something you’re really passionate about?

As a seasoned pivoter, I’ve come to believe that a pivot can be as simple as rearranging your expertise, your skills, and your aptitude into a new configuration. I went from a writer of news to a writer of magazine features, then to a writer of promotional materials for clients, then to a self-employed writer serving clients. The core skill, writing, was the same, but rearranging the medium, the audience, and the subject matter allowed me to embrace new opportunities.

One other important facet of the pivot is belief. If we believe that we can use our assets in more than one way, we can pivot. If we believe we are young enough to try – even master – something new, then we are. “If you mentally view yourself as younger—if you believe you have a few pivots left—you still see yourself as useful,” says Dr. Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health, as quoted in the current issue of The Atlantic.

Want to try it? There’s an interesting five-step process of reinvention to use as a guide, or you may want to begin your exploration with ikigai.

Pull out your dancing shoes. This could be your time to shine!

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Paul Long has created New Way Forward to spread his ideas about how older adults can approach the new realities of longer lifespans and changing demographics. In this interview, Paul talks about his lifelong desire to be a storyteller and how that caused him to make a major career pivot. We also discuss:

• Why retirement is not for everyone.
• The power of intention to bring about the changes we desire.
• How to channel intention or, if you prefer, to create new neural pathways.
• The scientifically proven, No. 1 factor in whether older adults enjoy good health.
• How outdated beliefs limit us from achieving what we want.

You can sample more of Paul’s ideas at https://www.newwayfwd.com or at https://medium.com/@plong45

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My wife and I and most of our friends span a narrow age range from mid-60s to mid-70s. That’s just fine, for now.

But I’m thinking about the future. In 20 years, when I am a fit, feisty 91 and my child bride is a dignified, elegant 86, what are the odds that our circle of friends will be intact?

Let me answer it this way: No life insurance company is willing to bet on it.

So I’m thinking, if many of our friends take early departures, who’s going to go with me to ballgames? Who will want to go to dinner and a movie? Who’s going to join us for Keith Richards and Willie Nelson concerts?

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The answer is painfully obvious: We need to cultivate younger friends.

What is less obvious is how to go about it gracefully. We can rule out a post on Match.com or OKCupid because, well, how lame does this sound? “Older couple seeks younger companions for friendship, dining out, and other fun activities.” Creepy! We’d be lucky not to get arrested.

Or we could try picking out random strangers at the grocery: “Excuse me but you look like a nice person. Would you be interested in having fun with older adults?” We’d be lucky not to get slapped.

Dinner Table ConversationsI have found one idea that seems reasonable – particularly in comparison to the first two – which is to invite people of different ages to dinner. In fact, there is a national organization designed to promote these events.

Generations Over Dinner is a global initiative, currently in beta stage, to “create meaningful multi-generational experiences and conversations.” Anyone can apply to host a dinner, and the website will provide you tools to make it happen: a step-by-step guide for planning the event, invitations for guests, several suggested topics for dinner conversation, and a script the host can use to get the conversation started and keep it rolling. The program encourages hosts to bring guests from as many as five generations to the table.

The major partners in the initiative are Modern Elder Academy, a “midlife wisdom school” that guides adults through life transitions, and the Association for Growth and Education, which makes grants to support “long life learning, midlife transitions, intergenerational connections and overcoming ageism.” Their stated goal for their joint effort is to bring together Gen Z and Millennial activists with older adults who seek opportunities to share their wisdom and learn from the younger generations.

Chip Conley, CEO of Modern Elder Academy, sees the project as “a platform that encourages shared wisdom” and has the potential to shift perspectives about aging. “Cultural tropes about aging have created acute age-segregation: the perception that school is just for young people, work is just for the middle-aged, and retirement communities are exclusively for older people,” Conley says. On a grander scale, he says, “the power of cross-generational connection and collaboration could genuinely improve the world.”

The program staff have created nine “scripts” (discussion guides) for three broad topics: the future, love and relationships, and purpose. Under the future, for example, there are guides for discussing problems and solutions, the planet, and end of life (for individuals, not the planet).

Where you find your dinner guests is still up to you. The website allows you to post an advance and have people volunteer to attend. (More than 1,000 people have signed up to the site so far.) But for starters, you might begin with your adult children and their friends. If that works, ask each of them to invite another friend for the next dinner.

Intergenerational IdeasBeyond dinner, there are other opportunities to interact with people from other generations. Generations United maintains a national database of intergenerational programs, searchable by state, and a rich library of resources. Cogenerate (formerly Encore.org), offers grants and fellowships to support intergenerational efforts by social impact organizations. It also produces research reports.

I’m all for cross-generational collaboration that improves the world. But my more immediate concern is finding younger people who are promising prospects for long-term relationships, the kind that might still be in place 20 years down the road.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

The EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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No. 25/ Feb. 15, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Is Processed Food Addictive?Highly processed foods have been linked to a variety of diseases from obesity and Type 2 diabetes to heart disease. Now some scientists argue that these sugar-, salt-, o…

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I’m usually a pretty easygoing guy, the kind who lets most of life’s aggravations and mini aggressions roll off my back. But one thing I cannot abide is seeing a person treated as less worthy than others. Particularly when the person in question is me.

I am talking about ageism, that insidious belief that you can measure a person’s worth by their number of years on the planet. Less than 18, and they lack the experience to make good decisions or have valid ideas. More than 65, and they’re irrelevant anachronisms ready to be put out to pasture. (For a comprehensive, clear overview of ageism, I recommend Tracy Gendron’s book Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It.)

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Some ageism is innocent and well-meaning. When a grocery cashier asks if I need help carrying my groceries to the car, I appreciate her desire to give great customer service; still, I need her to understand that this customer is not yet so over-the-hill that he can’t carry two bags to his car. Some ageism is well-meaning but oblivious, as when the daughter says to her octogenarian mother at the restaurant, “Are you sure you want to order the steak? It might be hard for you to chew. You should have the soup.”

Age DiscriminationBut then there’s age discrimination that’s blatant and in plain view. It’s the discrimination patients feel when doctors don’t take their symptoms seriously and tell them it’s just normal aging. It’s the discrimination in Hollywood that all but bans women over 35 from being cast as romantic leads, and relegates these actresses to no future screen roles except as doddering grandmothers. It’s the discrimination of an advertising industry that rarely depicts older adults at all, and then only as caricatures in need of help and pity. It’s the discrimination – and exploitation – of the anti-aging cosmetics industry, which rakes in more than $50 billion annually by convincing women (mostly) that they cannot succeed in love, work, or life unless they conceal all evidence of aging.

Growing older wouldn’t be so bad, really, were it not for all these voices hectoring us that reaching advanced years is a weakness, a deficit, a disease, and a problem that should make us afraid or ashamed.

And do you know what’s the worst part of ageism? It’s that deep in our subconscious, we accept some of these lies as the truth. How could we not, given a steady volley of ageist messages every day for our entire lives? Advertising industry sources estimate that the average person is bombarded with between 6,000 and 10,000 advertisements daily. (That’s up from 500 to 1,600 ads daily back in the 1970s, before the digital media explosion.) It’s inevitable that some portion of that tsunami of anti-aging ideas will enter our brains and become part of what we accept as reality.

Trash TalkThe only way I know to free our own minds of ageism and feel positive about what is, after all, a natural and inevitable part of life, is to perceive these voices for what they are - trash talk.

Trash talk, if you’re not plugged in to current vernacular, is an insult that one competitor tosses at an opponent to put him off his game. Muhammad Ali was a master of it, and he wielded it as effectively as his fists.

When Estee Lauder, Eve Arden, and other brands promise to “turn back the clock” by clearing away wrinkles and other “signs of aging,” that’s trash talk. That’s telling older women that aging is a threat to their livelihood and their sexuality. And it’s bullshit.

When physicians tell older patients their symptoms are normal for their age or all in their head, that’s trash talk. That’s telling patients that aging is an inevitable state of decline and decrepitude and they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. And it’s bullshit.

When retirement communities suggest that “active seniors” will feel right at home surrounded by others of similar age, safe and separated from the concerns of the world of younger people, that’s trash talk. That’s an excuse to separate older adults from a society that acts as if it has no further use for them. And it’s bullshit.

For us to stop internalizing the trash talk about growing older, we need to recognize how pervasive it is. We also have to remember that there is an alternate narrative: Age is a blessing that not all of us are privileged to enjoy. We older adults cannot be stereotyped. Many of us continue to lead productive, creative, meaningful lives, and with good health and good luck we can continue to do that for decades. Our “retirement date” is not our sell-by date; we still have a lot of life to live.

Recognize the trash talk for what it is, and shut it down. Do not let anyone tell you that your age makes you less than anyone else.

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Was your transition to retirement bumpy?I want to interview people about their own retirement experience for a book I’m researching. If you care to share your story, please email me at don@donakchin.com to set up a remote interview.

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Karen Midyet, a clinical psychologist, reinvented herself in her 50s (after a three-year “retirement”) as a retirement coach and specialist on older adults. With more than 45 year of experience as a counselor and coach, she shares some of her wisdom about a number of topics, including:

• What makes the transition to retirement so difficult
• How to incorporate structure in your life, while remaining firmly in charge
• How older adults can reinvent or repurpose themselves to live the life they want
• Why it’s okay to make mistakes or false starts when no one is keeping score
• The importance of social connections, physical activity, and nutrition on physical and cognitive health.

You can learn more about Karen Midyet’s coaching practice at CoachingAgingAdults.com

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If you have trouble sleeping at night, you are in excellent company. Researchers estimate between 40% and 70% of older adults have chronic sleep issues. The reason the estimate is so imprecise is that as many as half of all cases may be unreported.

It’s not unusual for sleep patterns to change as we age. That’s normal. Unfortunately, sleep issues may well be the result of other medical conditions, or even a partial cause of them. Moreover, sleep deprivation seems to trigger molecular processes in our bodies that drive biological aging. Researchers believe detecting sleeping problems and intervening early will produce long-term health benefits.

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Contrary to folk wisdom, it is not true that older adults need less sleep. The medical consensus is that we continue to need as much sleep as we did when we were younger adults – seven to eight hours each night.

If that’s more than you’re getting now, how do you know whether your sleeping is a sign of trouble or just a normal part of aging?

Based on my reading – and bearing in mind that my only medical qualification is having once read a medical journal article – here is some guidance that may be useful.

The Normal“Early to bed, early to rise...” yada yada yada. It’s not unusual for sleep patterns to change, thanks in part to a master internal clock lodged in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. The SCN controls the body’s 24-hour cycles, a.k.a. circadian rhythms, which influence when you get hungry, when you feel sleepy, etc. While you were aging, so was your SCN, and it might have lost a cog or a spring or two, resulting in a big reset. As a result, your normal wakeup time of 7 a.m. might become 5 a.m.

The SCN responds to light, and exposure to daylight helps maintain circadian rhythms. But many older adults don’t get enough daylight exposure to keep the 24-hour clock calibrated.

Another thing that may happen is changes in hormone levels. As we age, our bodies secrete less melatonin, which is normally produced in response to darkness (hence, the idea behind melatonin supplements as a sleep aid.)

There’s no harm in waking up earlier, as long as you go to bed earlier to compensate. Another way to cover the sleep deficit is by napping. Short naps can be helpful in refreshing your brain and body. But use discretion. Naps of more than one hour and naps in late afternoon may disrupt your sleep pattern even more.

The Not So NormalThen there are a host of maladies that afflict many older adults, and to which attention must be paid.

• Insomnia. If you can’t fall asleep easily every now and then, maybe you’re too keyed up. But if it happens frequently, you have insomnia, and you want to address it quickly. Insomnia can be triggered by a number of other conditions - most often by anxiety, depression, or changes in circadian rhythms - but it is often treatable.
• Sleep apnea. If your airway becomes obstructed while you sleep, your breathing pauses. This condition often leads to snoring and fragmented sleep – for you and anyone ese nearby. Uncorrected, sleep apnea can affect the body’s oxygen levels, which can lead to headaches, difficulty thinking clearly, and daytime sleepiness. Wearing a CPAP device at night keeps the airway open and allows for sounder sleep.
• Restless leg syndrome. People with this condition experience a tingling, crawling, or pins and needles sensation in one or both legs. Medicines are available to treat it.
• Periodic limb movement disorder. This condition causes involuntary movements in the legs or feet at frequent intervals during sleep. In addition to medicines, relaxation exercises and warm baths can bring relief.
• REM behavior disorder. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the point in the sleep cycle when we dream. Normally, when the body reaches this state, the brain sends a signal to immobilize the muscles. When you have the disorder, your muscles move and your sleep is disturbed.
• Nighttime urination. An estimated 80% of older adults experience physical changes in the urinary system, meaning we need to urinate more often during the night. Even for those who can easily fall back to sleep, the disruptions may lower the quality of sleep.

Helpful HabitsIf you’re on the fence about whether your sleep issues are normal or problematic, try these helpful home remedies before consulting a doctor.

• Bedroom restrictions. Get your mind and body used to the idea that the only things that happen in the bedroom are sleeping and sex. No reading, no texting, no television – make the bedroom exclusively the room where sleep is the primary activity.
• Regularity. Help your internal body clock find its rhythm by keeping a regular sleep schedule. Go to bed at the same hour every night, get up at the same hour every morning – even weekends.
• Exercise. Try to exercise daily – just not within three to four hours of bedtime.
• Warm bath or shower. Studies consistently show that a bath or shower before bed shortens the time it takes to fall asleep. The reason is that your core body temperature – the temperature of the cavities containing your internal organs – needs to decrease in order for you to fall asleep. The quick shower or bath helps cool the body down.
• Avoid alcohol before bed. Alcohol, on the other hand, warms your insides – the opposite of what you need to go to sleep.
• Solitary activity. Reading (the more boring, the better), light yoga, or listening to mellow music are all good things to do before bedtime, because they encourage mind (and body) to wind down.
• Warm milk. This home remedy has worked for generations, and it even has good science behind it.

If you’re still having sleep issues after trying the appropriate home remedies, check with your doctor. Don’t let lack of sleep make you feel older than you are.

A Personal ApologyIf you were among the first subscribers to The EndGame, you may have received a message from me this week about coming attractions. I did not intend to send it. Please accept my sincere apologies for this spam-like clutter in your inbox. That message was originally sent in March 2021 to announce that I was beginning The EndGame, and to my dismay been sent by my computer to the same list four more times in the past two years. I am happy to report that my brilliant tech support guru, Pablo Jusem at TenacITy, found the problem, isolated it, and blasted it into the ionosphere. Henceforth, you will receive only the freshest, newsiest bulletins from me, I guarantee.

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No. 24/Feb. 1, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Walkable Retirement Communities Emerging, and So Is OppositionThe leading edge of retirement living is the walkable retirement community, designed to encourage residents to walk wherever they want to…

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Lately I have read several articles about older adults searching for ikigai. Before I elaborate on this important topic, let me share two cautionary notes:

1. You will not find ikigai on the sushi menu.
2. The correct pronunciation is ee-key-GUY. If you incorrectly pronounce it ICK-ee-guy, some people will think you are discussing a stalker.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to “your reason for living,” or what gets you out of bed in the morning. Ikigai originated in Okinawa, an island in southern Japan. Not coincidentally, Okinawa is one of the five Blue Zones in the world, places where people live longest. Okinawans say ikigai is just as important to their longevity as healthy diet and lifestyle.

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As so often happens, the way we understand ikigai in the West departs somewhat from the Japanese version, which of course is closely bound up in Japanese culture. The Western version, popularized by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, centers on four key ideas:

• Find what you love
• Find what you are good at
• Find what you can get paid for
• Find what the world needs.

Graphically, these four ideas are represented in a Venn diagram with four overlapping circles. Where what you are good at overlaps what you can be paid for, you find your profession; the overlap of what you love and what you are good at is your passion. Where what you can be paid for and what the world needs overlap is your vocation; where what you love overlaps what the world needs, you will find your mission. And if you work hard and are very lucky, you may find that sweet spot in the middle, the shaded area where all four circles overlap. That is your purpose in life, your personal ikigai.

Why now?Ikigai is a useful tool for us to consider and incorporate into this stage of our lives. For 40 years, give or take, our lives were consumed by vocation and profession. Life revolved tightly around making a living. Today, by contrast, we have (or soon will have) a big hole to fill once the majority of our waking hours are free from preoccupation with earning the paycheck. We can see this new reality as frightening, or as an opportunity. I happen to side with opportunity. Free from what we must do, we have the chance to do what our hearts tell us we were meant to do. Ikigai is a tool for helping us find our passion and our purpose. It’s a treasure map to the deepest realms of the soul.

But how do we actually find the treasure?

Time TravelPersonally, I recommend time travel – at least its generic equivalent, reminiscence.

• Not sure what you love to do? Travel back to your childhood, your adolescence, your young adulthood. Recall what you have done that filled your heart with joy. What were those moments – not necessarily your greatest accomplishments – when you knew that this was what made you happy and what you wish you could always do?
• As for what you’re good at, your best clues here may be external feedback you received for jobs well done. Where have you excelled? And what were the component parts that made you successful and earned you recognition?
• What you can be paid for begins, easily enough, with what you’ve been paid for in the past. But instead of thinking in terms of job titles, try breaking down specific skills you’ve mastered, such as attention to detail or managing teams of diverse individuals. There may be ways to recombine your skill sets in ways you haven’t thought about.
• And what does the world need, besides universal brotherhood and a better mousetrap? This is where you look around you for gaps that haven’t been filled, for problems that could be but haven’t been solved.

You can get a good overview of ikigai in this short TED talk by Tim Tamashiro. For some useful exercises to help you seek answers, check out the online worksheets at Positivepsychology.com.

Much of this may sound familiar. It does to me – I have done these deep dives on several occasions, usually when trying to reinvent myself for a career change. My guide on previous soul-searching expeditions was the venerable What Color Is Your Parachute?, the handy manual for career changers. It is worth noting one important distinction: Parachute takes a pragmatic, Western approach. The main ideas are all illustrated as rectangular building blocks with hard, straight borders. By contrast, ikigai’s gently overlapping circles suggest a holistic perspective and its non-Western origins.

At this stage of life, ikigai strikes me as the approach that best reflects the overlapping and wide-ranging experiences and knowledge I have acquired over many decades. And finding my ikigai seems to be a worthwhile quest to shape the decades that remain.

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Karen Carr has been coaching adults since 2001 to help them get better clarity about their lives and the possibilities open to them. In this interview she explains why retirement often forces change in marriage, in friendships, and other aspects of life. Among her observations:

• In a way, we have to unlearn everything we’ve learned about living.
• As Victor Frankl observed, our greatest fear is of the unknown.
• Transitions are difficult.
• The freedom of infinite free time can be overwhelming.
• Friends don’t want you to change. It’s more comfortable for them if you stay as you are.
• A good retirement coach listens - without an agenda - and helps you find what’s best for you.

Give a listen!

For more about Karen Carr’s coaching practice, check out her website: Revitalizecoaching.com

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A few months back I would feel pain in my left thigh after walking for 15 minutes. Sometimes I felt it in my knee, but more often it was coming from closer to my hip. I was hearing stories from my friends about knee replacements and hip replacements. Since walking is the most strenuous form of exercise I indulge in, I was concerned that I might lose even that and thus devolve into a misshapen blob.

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My next regular appointment with my doctor was several months away. In the interim, my wife suggested that I pay a visit to Sean, her physical therapist.

Good call! Sean asked a few questions, allowed me to change into shorts and a t-shirt, and then had me lie on his treatment table. He then commenced the laying on of the hands. With vigor and enthusiasm.

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“Let me know if something hurts,” he said.

“EEYAIIIIOWW!” My whole body shot upward.

“That’s called a trigger point,” Sean said.

“I may have another name for - EEYAIIIIOWW!” My body made another attempted launch.

What You KneadSean continued his manual explorations, and I continued my vertical spasms. “It’s not your knee or your hip,” Sean declared. “The problem is your quadriceps are too tight,” he said, thereby demonstrating that a muscle is the shortest distance between two joints. In my case, they were too short. “Once we loosen up your quads and lengthen them,” he said, “your issues should go away.”

He demonstrated four simple exercises I could do at home, and suggested using a heating pad, as a warm muscle is a happy muscle. “Do you have a foam roller?” he asked. I did not. “How about a rolling pin?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Roll it over your quads when you’re warming up and again when you finish your exercise,” he said. “It will help smooth out the knots.”

Long story short, I had six weekly sessions with Sean, each less painful than the one before, and I began kneading my quads with the rolling pin several times a day. The pain disappeared, it hasn’t returned, and I have stopped worrying about the life expectancy of my knee and hip.

But imagine what would have happened if I had taken my complaints to my physician. Given the way the system works, she would have referred me to an orthopedic specialist, with one of two likely results:

1. After examination, he schedules me for knee surgery, hip surgery, or both.

OR

1. After examination, he laughs raucously, assures me everything is normal, and tells to come back when it really hurts.

In either case, physical therapy saved me time, money, pain, and embarrassment.

The Sum of the PartsMy friend David Shulman, a retired physical therapist and Sean’s mentor, believes when people take their pains to the medical community, they tend to suffer prolonged pain between appointments, wrong diagnoses, needless MRIs, cortisone injections, medications with harmful side effects, and hundreds of wasted hours. What feels like arthritis, for example, may be just a stressed muscle. Starting with a visit to the physical therapist often could save time, money, and aggravation.

I am not knocking doctors. They know what they know, and they know a lot. But obviously the rewards in American medicine go to the specialists. The practitioners of general medicine – family practitioners or geriatricians – are still around, in theory, but your medical encounters are far more likely to feature an internist, a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, a neurologist, an orthopedist, a podiatrist, a psychiatrist, an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, an ophthalmologist, etc. They know all about your parts. They are less able to treat your body as a whole system, or you as a whole person.

Physical therapists know muscles, and they know how to heal them when they become strained, sprained, overused, or injured in other ways. In my experience, they are more apt to take a holistic approach, if only because muscles and tendons and nerves work together, not always in obvious ways. Consider the problem of pain. Pain is a signal from the brain that something is awry. I may feel the pain in my hip, or my knee, or my elbow, but none of those locations may be the real source of the problem, because the nerves like to refer pain elsewhere. My experience with my knee-hip problem is a perfect example.

I trust my doctor, and I’ll continue to keep appointments to monitor my lungs, heart, kidneys, and all the other organs. But when I feel soreness, weakness, or muscle spasms, my first stop is Sean’s treatment table.

For a good article on other good reasons to seek out physical therapy, check out this recent article from AARP's Senior Planet.

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No. 23/ Jan. 18, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

Home Improvements Can Help You Age in PlaceIf you plan to live in your current home for the duration, and want to add safety features to make that more likely, there are seven essential activities …

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I came across the phrase “time affluence” only a week ago, but apparently the term has been around since a researcher coined it in 2009. If the meaning isn’t clear at a glance, start by looking at its opposite, “time poverty.” You have time poverty if every waking moment of your day is consumed by the stresses of work, caregiving, and other necessary but not particularly enjoyable tasks.

Sound familiar? Four out of five working Americans feels time poor, according to Ashley V. Whillans, a Harvard professor of business administration who specializes in the links between time, money, and happiness.

Time affluence, then, is feeling that you have enough time in a day for things you want to do. If you have stopped working, there’s an excellent chance that you are time affluent.

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And that’s a good thing. Because Whillans’ research finds that people who value time more than money tend to be happier. They also are more engaged in civic affairs and more likely to pursue those activities they are most passionate about.

Time affluence is among the greatest benefits of being an older adult. We might even say it’s our due, our just compensation for decades of stress and exhaustion as we tried to fit the multiple demands of work, family, and social ties into days that refused our every effort to stretch them beyond 24 hours. So with full-time work off the table, the tradeoff for surrendering the steady paycheck is a surplus of time for our leisure and enjoyment.

The Cult of BusynessThere’s just one catch.

As Americans, we live in a culture that provides us no guidance on how to spend leisure time productively. In fact, one of the dominant forces in American life is what Whillans calls “the cult of busyness.” Being busy, or pretending to be busy, is a status symbol that signals importance. We are so wedded to busyness that we almost need to retrain ourselves to enjoy leisure time, she says.

The opposite reaction is also a problem. Some of us, drunk on our sudden rich reserves of leisure time, may spend it recklessly and lose the opportunity to use it to our benefit.

Let me cite one example with which I am intimately acquainted. Ahem. In my so-called retirement, I spend about 20 hours each week on The EndGame: Researching and writing a weekly post, creating and editing a biweekly podcast, and writing biweekly premium content for paid subscribers. That should leave me 92 waking hours each week. Even after accounting for the necessities of personal hygiene, body maintenance, spiritual maintenance, relationship maintenance, food prep, food consumption, and the occasional walk, there ought to be plenty of time to devote to things I value. And there would be, were it not for the fact that I waste roughly 20 hours a week doomscrolling through video clips on Facebook. I distract myself with snippets from old television shows about cops, lawyers, doctors, and spies, interspersed with with the occasional classic western and romcoms. For several decades I ignored television and managed to bypass all this cultural effluvia; now suddenly I feel a strange compulsion to see what I’ve been missing – for hours at a time.

While this particular time-suck does me no direct harm, it does fritter away valuable time that I would rather spend on more stimulating and rewarding activities: discover new music, write a book, learn guitar finger-picking, volunteer at a school, check in with friends, bounce off the walls with my grandchildren.

What can I do to turn my down time into constructive me time?

Managing TimeWhillans, the author of Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live A Happier Life, notes that “leisure time” is rather abstract. To make it real, we need to make it more concrete by breaking time down to specific activities. A good starting place to to track our time, she says, so we know where it goes. Once we know, we can budget it more effectively.

Kim Childs, a life and career coach who specializes in positive psychology, has found a number of techniques that help us capture more leisure time for our own enjoyment:

• Set alarms to remind you to pause and breathe (or in my case, to break away from distraction).
• Step away from the computer to do something totally unrelated to work.
• Consolidate errands in one or two days, leaving other days free.
• Start the morning with something to nurture your spirit and set the tone for a more intentional, less reactive day.
• When reviewing the to-do list, ask what you want to do next, rather than what you must do next.

The word on the street is that money can’t buy happiness. Time affluence, on the other hand, just might. If we can learn to make the most of our bonus hours, we can really live the lives we want to live as older and wiser people.

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Paula Marie Usrey, a former professor of speech communications and professional retirement coach, is the author of Refusing to be Invisible: Life Planning Empowerment Strategies for Women 50+. In this interview, she discusses:

• How it feels to be “erased” - to be treated not as yourself but as an “old person”
• How women 50+ can communicate strength, verbally and nonverbally
• Why ageism and sexism seem to be so firmly imbedded in American culture
• The importance of having a clear purpose
• Why you can anticipate joyful, positive experiences ahead as an older woman.

Paula’s book is available on Amazon. You can see Paula’s blog and other resources, and subscribe to her monthly newsletter, at https://www.boomerbestu.com

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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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I was living in Florida when I got married. My wife didn’t like it there. “I want to live somewhere with all four seasons,” she said. “Florida only has two – summer and fall.”

Lately she may be rethinking her position. For nine months of the year, she always feels cold. On days when I wear a windbreaker, she wears a sweater and a light coat, plus a scarf. On days when I wear a lined raincoat, she requires a minimum of three layers of heavy insulation, plus gloves.

Though I seem more weather-resistant than my wife, I also have to admit that each successive winter has seemed harder to handle than the previous one – and the past three winters have been quite mild.

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Poking around on the internet, I have discovered an explanation for the winters of our discontent, and it is physiological: As we age, our bodies do, in fact, lose their ability to tolerate cold temperatures.

If that gives you the shivers, slip on a warm wool sweater and pull up a chair while I share what I’ve learned.

We can see in the mirror that our bodies are changing with age. In my case, leading indicators are gray hair and baggy eyes. But subtle changes also are occurring behind the curtain. Our body fat gets redistributed, and one loser in the reallocation is the layers of fat underneath the skin. This may sound positive to those of the you-can-never-be-too-thin school, but its effect is that the body has a harder time maintaining body heat. At the same time, aging also slows metabolism, a heat-producing process, so the body has a harder time generating enough heat to maintain a normal internal temperature of 98.6 degrees, more or less. To compound things, slower blood circulation decreases the body’s ability to retain heat throughout the body.

Understanding these physiological changes has helped me connect observations that otherwise might seem unrelated:

• Why grandmother’s apartment always feels like a sauna. (For a funny take on this, check out this short piece about the six degrees of separation – from 72 to 78 Fahrenheit).
• Why millions of people who live contentedly in cold climates for 30 and 40 years suddenly feel compelled to move to Florida.
• Why older Americans are the most ambivalent about global warming.

In other words, if you constantly are battling against a chill, it may be normal.

Or NotOn the other hand, it may not be normal.

It seems there are other factors, internal and external, that may cause older adults to feel cold. So before you assume that your chill is just natural aging, check with your physician to be sure it isn’t one of these:

• Side effects from medications, including antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives, or beta-blockers.
• An underactive thyroid
• Anesthesia
• Atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease
• Parkinson’s Disease
• Diabetes
• Sepsis
• Malnutrition, anemia, and anorexia
• Alcohol use
• Drug use

Warning: Take It SeriouslyChills are more than an inconvenience. They constitute a real danger. Because older adults have less ability to keep our body heat, we have a higher risk of hypothermia, when the body temperature falls below 95 degrees.

Perhaps you thought, as I did, that hypothermia is something that only happens to skaters who fall through the ice or hikers who get stranded in the Rockies. It is not. It doesn’t even take freezing temperatures to bring an older adult’s body temperature into the danger zone. An older adult may need immediate medical help if they:

• Are disoriented or confused
• Are breathing slowly or shallowly
• Have a slow or weak pulse
• Are drowsy or clumsy
• Have slurred speech
• Lose consciousness

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says more people die from excessive cold than from heat. So be vigilant for yourself or older adults in your care. Drink warm liquids throughout the day (but not hot toddies; alcohol triggers heat loss). Turn up the thermostat. Seal up the cracks and leaks that let heat out and the cold in. Layer up. Keep the home fires burning. Count your blessings and remember that spring will be here soon.

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No. 22/ Jan. 4, 2023NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers. To keep up with the latest news relevant to people our age, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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Rents are on the RiseThere’s bad news for the 30% of older Americans who rent: the median monthly rental nationwide has leaped 22% in the last three years. One consequence is that adults 65 and older are the fastest-growing group of homeless people, and their numbers could triple by 2030, according to the American Society on Aging, which predicts their numbers will triple by 2030. An Urban Institute study finds that more than half of older adult renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, and nearly 25% of older renters pay more than half their income on rent. National, state, and local relief programs for burdened renters are “limited,” to put it mildly.

Congress Comes Down Hard on FDA and the Makers of AduhelmDo you remember Aduhelm, the much-ballyhooed Alzheimer’s treatment priced at $56,000 annually and never proven to make any difference in Alzheimer’s patients? The drug that was approved in a highly unusual process and single-handedly caused Medicare to jack up Part B premiums? An 18-month Congressional investigation, released in late December, blasted the FDA process as “rife with irregularities” that “raise serious concerns about FDA’s lapses in protocol.” Nor did the report spare Biogen, the drug’s manufacturer, for setting “an unjustifiably high price” as part of a massive marketing campaign to establish Aduhelm’s launch as a “blockbuster.” Aduhelm reduces beta-amyloid plaque in the brain, but scientists have cast doubt on whether attacking the plaque relieves symptoms or reverses the disease.

Searching for Long-Term Care Causes Anxiety and FrustrationOne in four adults ages 50 and older needed long-term care for themselves or a loved one last year, and according to a survey by Nexus Insights, more than half found the selection process frustrating and anxiety-producing. The report adds: “The findings illustrate the widespread need for information and guidance about long-term care services…a need that experts say will grow exponentially in the future.”

New Coalition Takes On Overdue Nursing Home ReformThe Moving Forward Coalition, a group funded by a $1 million grant to LeadingAge from The John A. Hartford Foundation, has been given a two-year mandate to produce short- and long-term action plans for reforming nursing homes, where 71% of older adults are unwilling to live. The coalition’s formation is in response to the Biden Administration’s plan to set higher standards for nursing home care and to damning report on the industry from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Expect to see pilot projects in select nursing homes to test whether reform proposals are viable.

Ageism in New York Times Called OutStella Fosse, a recent guest on our podcast, has penned an open letter to the New York TImes that points out instances when the “newspaper of record” published headlines and articles filled with ageist caricatures and slurs. Among the headlines cited: “Joe Biden is Too Old To Be President Again,” “Why Are We Still Governed by Baby Boomers and the Remarkably Old?,” and “Is America Stuck in a Gerontocracy?” She identifies ageism as another form of bigotry and calls for the newspaper to reflect and do better.

A Smartphone You Can ReadMost smartphones and tablets have built-in features to make them easier on the eyes and the fingertips, but you have to know how to activate them. The AARP’s Senior Planet offers step-by-step instructions for enlarging text, display, and tiny icons.

What’s Your Legacy?What will you leave your family – not materially, but in terms of character and moral values? Author, psychologist, and gerontologist Ken Dychtwald offers some questions to consider as you think about your ethical will.

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If you are trying to locate seventysomething by Susie Kaufman, and I hope you are, the link I provided in today’s post was incorrect. This is the correct link. Do check it out.

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Happy Holidays, one and all!This will be my last post in 2022 (I’m taking off next week to visit family, weather and Covid permitting). Please know how very grateful I am to you for your support this year! Thank you to all who subscribe - your numbers have more than doubled this year – to all who augment the conversation with comments and suggestions, and to all whose paid subscriptions make it all possible. You make my encore career a joy, and I appreciate your support so much. Old Man Winter ReadingToday, if you live in North America and the weather wizards were on top of their game, you have a 75% chance of being snowbound, icebound, windswept – in other words, “it ain’t a fit night out for man or beast.” I hope you are indoors, cozy, and warm. As long as you’re inside, here are a few suggestions for great reading about positive aging to carry you into the new year. These sources helped me understand aspects of aging and enlarged my perspectives.

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Longevity Lifestyle by Design: Redefining What Retirement Can Be, by Mike Drak and friends.

First things first: this book is available for free! No need to run to the bookstore or the library; you can download it at https://longevitylifestylebydesign.boomingencore.com/.Author Mike Drak, a self-proclaimed “retirement rebel” whose first post-work experience gave him first-hand experience in “Retirement Hell,” has teamed up with fellow retirement coaches to reveal the secrets to a long, happy, fulfilling retirement. Chapters include nine steps for designing “your ideal longevity lifestyle.” The book is not a page-turner, but it is rich with ideas that are relevant to all of us on how to approach our encore phase of life.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin.

At the age of 80, the highly acclaimed science fiction novelist Ursula K. Le Guin decided to try writing a blog, a feat of derring-do that is inspiring in itself. When assembled in book form, the blog posts from the final decade of her life look remarkably like short essays, which in fact they are, and they make delightful reading. Le Guin’s distinctive voice shines through. She is an intelligent observer who has seen it all, sometimes with amusement but often with impatience. In the title essay, for example, she cleverly picks apart a Harvard alumni questionnaire, reflecting on questions that confound her such as “In your spare time, what do you do?” Le Guin concludes: “I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.”

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande.

I know I’m late to the party on this book, which was published in 2014, but it is quite remarkable in raising some highly pertinent questions. When is medical intervention counterproductive? Can doctors learn to balance what’s possible against the kind of life the patient desires? Is there a point at which keeping older adults safe prevents them from enjoying life’s small pleasures? Illustrating these dilemmas are compelling human stories, including the sad tale of the last days of the author’s father. The book is a powerful critique of how American medicine is practiced and how elderly adults are treated.

What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age, by Ken Dychtwald and Robert Morison.

If you didn’t know Ken Dychtwald has been following the Baby Boom generation since the 1970s and has built his career on predicting their impact on virtually everything, he’ll remind you on page 1. The story that Boomer demographics tell in this book is how the cohort’s vast numbers, together with longer lifespans, is redefining retirement and the senior healthcare industry. Dychtwald’s research concludes what Boomers really want is to live with purpose and leave a legacy.

And Even More ReadingHere are more sources of good reading accessible from the internet, courtesy of my writing comrades at Substack:

Seventysomething, by Susie Kaufman. A retired hospice chaplain with a strong contemplative streak, Susie writes beautifully crafted essays about aging that raise profound questions.

A Considerable Age, by Alice Goldbloom. Alice, another fine essayist, shares her platform with a variety of carefully curated guest contributors.

Non-Boring History, by Annette Laing. A trained historian who prides herself on not writing like one, Annette is a Brit by birth, a former professor, and a great storyteller who cuts through American myths to write about the overlooked, forgotten, and misunderstood chapters in American history with great wit and a heaping helping of snark.

Vintage Morels, by Wayne Christensen. If you’re not hungry, you will be once you feast your eyes on Wayne’s newsletter, filled with odes to great dishes of every culinary tradition. Wayne also shares his experiences with fine dining and fine wining.

Spread your love around, stay warm, and let’s continue the conversation in the new year.

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Joanne Waldman, who coaches not only retirees but other retirement coaches, talks about what it takes to make a successful transition from work to retirement. In this interview she discusses:

• The value of being creative with change.
• Why going from working to not-working is not automatic.
• Why it’s hard work to shed your work identity and find your “authentic self.”
• The value of planning ahead - while in your 50s, if you can.
• Why the new focus is not on retirement but on longevity.

To read more about Joanne and her coaching practice, check out her website at http://www.newperspectivecoaching.com

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Photo by Ricardas Brogys for Unsplash

I was never the kind of kid who had dozens of friends. I was the kind who was happy to have one best friend – occasionally two – at one time. That was my recurring pattern from childhood up through my teens. My close friends were always other boys, of course – girls, from what I could tell, were mysterious creatures inhabiting another universe altogether.

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Today I don’t have a male best friend. As I think back, I realize I haven’t had a best friend for decades. This worries me when I read article after article describing men who find themselves isolated and lonely in retirement, with the blame for this regrettable state falling squarely on their failure to cultivate deep, durable friendships. Loneliness is certainly not the state I had in mind for myself in old age. And yes, I confess that I was poor at maintaining friendships over many changes of location and changes of employment.

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But while I was in the midst of beating myself up about my personal shortcomings, I chanced to read these startling words by writer Mark Greene:

Will you be my friend? Sometime around first grade, boys stop asking that question and they never ask it again, because it quickly becomes an invitation for bullying and abuse.

In fact, says Niobe Way, author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, by their late teens boys know that having close male friendships puts them at risk of being labeled girly, immature, or gay. These labels must be avoided at all costs, so boys instead evolve into “Marlboro men,” who are self-reliant, emotionally stoic, and isolated.

See? It wasn’t entirely my fault. I’ve been socially programmed to avoid deep friendships.

It appears that I’m in excellent company. In a 2021 survey from the Survey Center on American Life, only 20% of men reported they had received emotional support from a friend in the past week. (Among women, the figure was 40%).

Another thing that often gets in the way of male friendship is marriage. With a whole new relationship to nurture, domesticity takes precedence over good times with the guys. Some men come to treat their marital partner as their real best friend (guilty!), and many rely on their wives to act as their de facto social director, (extremely guilty!).

Work Friends Don’t CountOf course we men do still have some friends. But outside of a regular set of buddies to meet for basketball or poker or biking, the vast majority are work friends. Friendships at work are based on convenience. On the other hand, as many retired men have found to their dismay, few work friendships survive once you leave work behind. The few you maintain contact with probably are your closest friends; all the rest were conditional on the work environment.

That, in short, is why retired men are often bereft of close male companions. We can hear tons of great advice from books, podcasters, therapists, and our wives about finding more friends, but to follow that advice is to swim against a strong tide of cultural programming and lifelong habits.

That’s not to say we men can’t do it. We would just appreciate a little understanding that this is a heavy lift.

At the risk of offering even more useless advice, here are some suggestions that may actually be helpful:

• Put yourself out there. You can’t assume that friendships occur organically, as they did in our youth. For adults, friend-making takes initiative. For starters, invite someone to join you at a football (baseball/hockey/basketball) game, or another activity.
• Find groups where other men gather, in activities you like. It could be a club, a class, or a volunteer activity.
• If you don’t find a suitable group, make your own. Use Meetup, a social media platform, to seek others who share your interests.
• Keep in touch with friends and acquaintances with a casual check-in. The occasional email or text can have a surprisingly powerful effect on people.
• Practice being vulnerable. A safe but effective way to begin is by listening intently and asking real questions. This helps create a safe space for your companion, which can lead to creating a safe space for you in turn.

And if you need some formal reinforcement, here are places to look for non-judgmental assistance.

Chapter X is a virtual group for recently retired men who offer support for one another, share experiences, and reflect on the tough questions men seldom ask. Founder Michael Kay, a former financial planner, blogs and podcasts as well. Contact: michaelfkay.com/chapter-x

Men’s Sheds is an international association created to help older men combat isolation and depression by building things. It recognizes that men would rather do than talk. Local chapters maintain tools and building materials, and men get together to tinker and make stuff. Their wise motto: Men don’t talk face to face, we talk shoulder to shoulder. Contact: usmenssheds.org

Modern Elder Academy (MEA) is a learning center that offers online courses and in-person learning experiences for men and women in a resort atmosphere. Its focus is on helping adults navigate midlife and beyond. Founder Chip Conley, a former entrepreneur, is the author of Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder. Contact: modernelderacademy.com

Gentlemen, let us not settle for lives of lonely geezerhood. Take the initiative now to cultivate strong friendships that can last.

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No. 21/ Dec. 14, 2022NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.

POINT: Americans Setting Up for Retirement FailureAs the American economy stumbles between high inflation and recession – or both simultaneously – 40% of workers say they plan to postpone their ret…

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“Who loves ya, baby?” Lieutenant Kojak was fond of asking. As we get older, a better question we should all ask is, ”Who’s going to care for me when I’m too frail to care for myself?”

For those of us blessed with much younger spouses or adult children with whom we still maintain diplomatic relations, the answer is self-evident: Family. For “solo agers” – those among us who live alone, are not in a long-term relationship, and/or have no children – answers are harder to come by.

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AARP says solo agers account for 12% of Americans ages 50 and up. At age 65 and older, we’re talking 12 million adults, or 27% of the U.S. population.

Wendl Kornfeld did more than ask the question; she did something about it. Wendl, who among her many sterling attributes happens to be a loyal and generous subscriber to The EndGame, had read in Gail Sheehy’s sequel to Passages about the need to prepare for old age both financially and psychologically. She and her husband were doing more caregiving for their aging mothers at the time, so she decided to begin preparing for her own old age well in advance. By the time she retired in 2013, “I had decided that my retirement job was going to be finding how to be really good at being old.” She also had come to realize that solo agers were at a particular disadvantage.

She addressed the challenges facing solo agers by starting a program called Community as Family. It began with five focus groups for solo agers in people’s homes. A year later her synagogue, Temple Emanu-El in New York City, invited her to bring the program under its sponsorship. “I was thrilled when they invited me,” Wendl says. “It has given the program a higher profile, as well as a higher profile for solo aging.”

This month Community as Family celebrated its eighth anniversary. Prior to Covid, the monthly meetings were held at the temple around a large conference table, with a light dinner. Each meeting provided information and discussion on a topic of concern, followed by time for socializing. A rabbi shares the facilitation duties with Wendl.

Familiarity Breeds Bonding“I call it an educational group, first and foremost,” Wendl says. “The bonus is, if your group meets regularly, you’re going to build ties and supportive relationships with each other. After eight years in my group, for instance, we’re each other’s health care proxies, we sit shiva (Jewish practice of mourning) with each other, we pick each other up from the hospital, we hold house keys for one another, and on and on. The familiarity of seeing the same people regularly helps build bonds.”

Based on the success of Community as Family, Wendl has advised dozens of organizations on how to replicate the program. She has written a starter guide on how to facilitate a group, including ice breakers to start conversation flowing. She has also shared basic forms she has created to help participants organize all the important details and vital information about their lives. “The program is a way to bring attention to the needs of solo agers, to realize it’s a demographic much larger than anybody realized until recently.” Also, she adds, “it has a lot of potential for organizations who want to better serve this demographic.”

It's a simple but effective program. The guiding principles spell ART:

• Anticipate getting older – beginning in your late 50s if possible, so you don’t wake up in crisis mode.
• Resources – learn which agencies do what and, just as important, learn how they work.
• Team – build an “A Team” for yourself from friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

A starting point for every group is “to get your critical documents in place, because all things will flow from them, and it will give you piece of mind so you can really go out and enjoy these years.” She includes the last will and testament, health care proxy, advance medical directives, and financial power of attorney. The financial power of attorney is the hardest for many people. “If you don’t have family members, you have to give someone else a lot of power over your finances,” she explains. “That requires tremendous trust.”

For others seeking to emulate the Community as Family model, she identifies several critical lessons for success. “Stick to the principles. Don’t become group therapy. Don’t become a ‘village’ where you’re doing chores for other members.” The group needs a strong facilitator who models courtesy, respect, and confidentiality and makes sure everyone is heard. But the facilitator doesn’t have to carry the load alone. She suggests asking active group members to take turns researching topics for meetings.

Starting the program was a natural outgrowth of Wendl’s personality. “I love people,” she says, “and making friends comes as naturally to me as breathing.”

What she has created can be a literal lifesaver for solo agers. Everyone needs an A Team to give them an assist when they need it most. If family isn’t the answer, Community as Family provides a nearly natural way to create your own.

You can learn more about Community as Family by emailing Wendl at wendlkornfeld1@gmail.com.

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Dr. Dana Burr Bradley is Dean of UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging Studies, one of only three such schools in the U.S. From her position interacting with aging adults, students of gerontology, and corporate care providers, she offers her thoughts on the current and future states of aging care, including:

• Why there will never be enough caregivers to meet the need for services.
• Industry’s new focus on “middle market” consumers of elder care.
• Why caregivers need to center their focus (and business model) on the individual patient.
• When is it okay to let competent older adults make bad decisions?

You can learn more about Dr. Bradley and the Erickson School at the school website, erickson.umbc.edu.

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A new assessment tool helps you measure your Retirement Quotient (RQ)

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Plus aging alone, small but potent lifestyle changes, and a 95-year-old “new” artist.

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The eyes had it, but they lost it.

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Listen now (23 min) | Life coach Kit Cassingham shares her practices for living well.

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We’re ready, but most businesses haven't caught on.

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Scientists say the health benefits of strenuous exercise have an upper limit.

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Listen now (22 min) | How Stella Fosse went from biotech to writing erotic fiction for "seasoned" women.

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VOTE - if you haven’t already. REGISTER - for the special free, live, online session, Unique and Fun Ways to Share Values with Your Grandchildren, co-hosted by me and Kerry Byrne. The session is Thursday November 10 at 1 pm EST. The session is free, but you do have to register at

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Retirement forces us to ask tough questions.

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Live Workshop on Sharing Your Values with Your Grandchildren

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Plus retirement spending, the odds on dementia, long-term care navigators, and more

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We’ve been tried, we’ve been tested, and we have triumphed.

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Listen now (27 min) | Janine Vanderberg talks about why ageism hurts us all and what to do about it.

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No fun fun fun after daughter takes the T-bird away.

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Medicaid Advantage companies bilking Medicare for billions

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Warning: All volunteer jobs are not created equal.

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Listen now (21 min) | Babs Plunkett coaches women who experience an identity crisis when the empty nest robs them of the role they feel is most important: Mother. In this interview, Babs talks about how women can make the transition to a happy life after the mother role ends, and similarly how to make the transition from working to retirement.

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At the intersection of morality and mortality

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At the intersection of morality and mortality

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Measuring the impact of the pandemic on our lives

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Plus: Crackdown on Medical Advantage marketing, eulogies you can hear

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Depression is common in older adults but harder to spot.

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Listen now (20 min) | Betsy Wurzel shares what she learned from hard-fought experience.

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In retirement, that is the question - with many answers.

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Plus: A playdate for your mother, making younger friends, an activist's cause

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“Age Tech” is growing fast, but is it ready for us?

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A meditation on adopting patience

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Plus: Rising rents, and explaining the changes to Medicare

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A college campus might be your ideal retirement home.

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Listen now (21 min) | Michelle Spiziri's art career waited until midlife to take off.

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A retirement coach can help you through the transition from work to not-work.

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Making human connections may be easier than you think.

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Listen now (27 min) | This episode contains an interview with Sharon Rolph, the “Queen of Courage” and author of the book Fresh Courage in Retirement: Finding Purpose, Essence & Fulfillment. Sharon talks about finding your essence and your purpose, as well as how to find the courage to live your best life in retirement.

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A lesson in recovery

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No. 12/July 27, 2022 NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers. “True Cost of Aging” Index Is Rising More than half of older women and 45% of older men who live alone lack the income to pay for essential expenses, according to the

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Is our best hope for health security destined to disappear?

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Listen now (33 min) | Medicare is complicated, as Medicare coach Nancy Schwartz explains, because it is a mix of public and private players. In this interview, Nancy unravels some of the complexity and explains: The difference between supplement insurance policies and Medicare Advantage plans.

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The problem is bigger than ageism.

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No. 11/July 13, 2022 NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers. Newest Trends in Senior Living Industry In an effort to overcome negative perceptions of retirement living and assisted living, dozens of

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Is Long-Term Care Insurance a Sound Long-Term Investment?

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Childhood may be over, but playtime doesn’t have to be.

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No. 10/June 29, 2022 NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers. When Only One Partner Retires Retirement is not an event as much as a transition from one life stage to another. It’s all the harder to navigate when only one partner is retired.