Why do we think we have to wait until we stop working for everything to be wonderful?  This idea that you slave away in the workforce for decades and then get a free pass to Wonderland for the rest of your life is silly.

There’s no free pass.  Ever.  Not even if you’re buying in on that “Golden Years” model and riding around in your motor home.  The truth about “the Good Life” is that it’s up to you to create it.  If you don’t have it, it’s not somebody else’s fault.

So before you start blaming your boss, your kids, or your spouse, see what you are doing about the following:

• Are you doing anything that honors your deepest sense of purpose?  You don’t have to spend your entire day focused on what you’re passionate about.  You can get away without doing anything about it some days, if that’s unavoidable.  But you do have to keep it in the mix.  Life happens.  Deal with it–but come from your own sense of why you are here in how you do whenever you can.
• Are you making bad assumptions about how much time you need to do something for yourself?  Yes, it’s nice to grab an entire afternoon, or even a full day, to do whatever it is that you enjoy.  But not giving yourself anything when you can have a lot makes about as much sense as not eating what’s in the fridge when you’re hungry because it’s not a five course dinner.  Give yourself the “little” treats when you can’t afford a day at the spa–or the golf course–on your current time budget.  Read a short story instead of a novel.  Take a “three minute vacation” by meditating about a setting you find particularly soothing.
• Are you using solutions that meet more than one need?  A friend was concerned that she wasn’t getting enough exercise.  She was also looking for ways she could do some financial belt tightening.  One of her solutions to the second problem helped with the first.  She decided to do her own gardening instead of hiring it done.  Walking is a great way to lose weight, but it’s also an important resource for problem solving.  (There’s something about putting one foot in front of the other again and again that helps you sort things out.)  Looking for solutions that give you what you want along with what’s needed to deal with the obvious problem can make life a lot more pleasant.
• Are you assuming that this stage of your life is just hard work? A lot of what we blame on others actually comes from what we are telling ourselves.  Of course, much of what we tell ourselves comes from what we learned from others, but still…  The Protestant Work Ethic has helped us thrive as a country, but use it in moderation!  You aren’t going to win a prize for going in early, staying late, bringing work home and having a heart attack because you were so focused on your job.  Yes, you need to do the work.  No, you do not need to do it 24/7.  You’re not effective that way and it is definitely not any fun.  Take timeouts as you can.  When you go on vacation, let go of everything you possibly can about work.

It’s easy to get sucked into external demands.  The job.  Your house.  The kids…or grandkids.  Your spouse.  That fact that you don’t have a spouse but want one.  All of that stuff is part of life.  How you knit it together is your call though.  You can make some really gorgeous tapestries with ordinary thread.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What  You Love.  Her new e-book 39 Bites:  Little Lessons for Getting Life Right is currently available on Kindle.  For more, see her website.

Is balance something you possess or that you pursue? Are you assuming someone else decides whether you have it?  Or do you see it more as an ongoing effort on your part?

Back in graduate school, I was delighted to discover work by Martin Seligman that talked about “learned helplessness.”  The term was used to describe the mindset of individuals who assume that they’re at the mercy of “powerful others”–God, the Establishment, whatever–who decide what happens in their lives.  Their assumption that someone else holds all the winning cards keeps them from even seeing what they can do to help themselves.

Life balance is vulnerable to that kind of thinking, even if you don’t go in that direction on everything else.  It’s really easy to assume that your life is out of balance because of  the load at work, the phase your child is going through or a favor for a friend that’s gotten far more complicated than you expected.  Life should just flow smoothly and balance should be a given, right?

Nope. Assuming that is just one more way to be a “victim.”

Seeing balance as an ongoing process rather than entitlement to Nirvana keeps you in the game.  And brings you closer to it even when you can’t get the “full meal deal.” Why?  Because seeing balance as an on-going process puts you in control. You can do things to move toward that version of emotional symmetry you prefer.

The good life isn’t about always being in balance.  It’s about getting good at recovering that balance when it goes away, which it will.  Often. 

Some things to consider as you work at it:

Not all efforts to achieve balance work.  If getting up an extra half hour in the morning to exercise makes you cranky for the rest of the day, forget it.  Look for a another way.

Not all options are total improvements.  Okay, you want more time with your kids.  That doesn’t mean they want to shovel snow with you.  But when they are part of getting the work done, you feel less like poorly paid hired help, right?

Sometimes your balance is on a different dimension than you planned.  So that snow shoveling wasn’t the fun “quality time” you were hoping for with whoever  you drafted to help.  You still had more time to get everything else done, right?  

Balance isn’t always intentional.  Perhaps you got the surprise of your life when you insisted on help in cleaning up that snow.  Sometimes working together really is, fun.  Yes!  A nudge from a different direction.

Balance is as much about assumptions as it is about reality.  Quite often, what’s out of balance is what you are telling yourself about what should be happening.  A classic definition of stress is “the difference between what’s happening and what you think should be happening.”  Getting a solid handle on what’s reasonable under the circumstances can take you a lot closer to balance than a major overhaul.  Accept reality.  Then change as it changes.

At the moment, I’m primary caregiver for a loved one undergoing an unpredictable journey through chemotherapy.  My resulting workload suggests that I am way out of balance.  But if I look at what’s really important to me (this person, whom I love very much, and my desire to help when given the chance), I’m not as far out of balance as the picture suggests.  Much as I’m doing less of a lot of what I love (hiking, writing, assorted adventures), I am doing something important that I don’t get the chance to do all the time.  That balances well with what I’m “missing” for this stretch of my life.

Balance changes moment to moment.  Even if you do get into perfect balance, you’re not going to stay there.  At least not if you’re human.  The key is whether you elect to stay out of balance or put effort into moving back toward equilibrium.   As life changes, make your own changes.

A good life is balanced but it’s up to you.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love .  She recently released the e-book 39 Bites of Wisdom:  Little Lessons on Getting Life Right  on Kindle  For more, see her website.

Dayton Fandray has done a great job of getting beyond the “motor homes and golf ” stereotype in the article he did for the Alaska Airlines inflight magazine for January. His profiles of a wide variety of  “untraditional retirees” might make you think twice about moving to Padre Island and heading for the beach.  Check it out.    (The article starts on page 74.)

Retiring early isn’t on most people’s radar anymore. But what about not retiring at all?  If that’s also looking unlikely, there are still things to do to forge a great life for yourself in your 60′s and beyond.

This retirement thing doesn’t have to be a yes/no one-shot deal.  A friend retired three times before he decided he really meant it.  And we all know about Bret Favre.  But even those examples are becoming simple, almost timid versions of the decision.  The new pioneers are finding ways to stay in the workforce  for the long haul instead of ever retiring.  Success at that depends on finding ways to incorporate much of what retirement would have meant to them in the work they continue to do.

Money  The first set of questions, if you are looking at whether this is the truer path for you, are financial.  How much do you need the money?  Is what you’re doing now going to provide the level of income you want?  If you just got riffed because the job you do is no longer key, you  might want to expand the range of options for what you do next.  Or if the whole industry is going away.  (Think video stores.) Is there a definied end to when you you will need this much cash?  (e.g. Paying off consumer debt or getting a kid or grandkid through college).   Get a good handle on what you will have coming in, too.  If you wait to take Social Security until you’re 70, the check will be bigger every month.  It’s your job to know how much bigger.

Please don’t tell yourself  “I’m too old to start over.” You’re never too old if you enjoy what you’re getting good at.

Meaning  After 60, you have to think about more than the money though.  Making something you hate doing a huge part of your life is hard on your physical health as well as your emotional wellbeing.  Choosing solely on how much money you can make will take you to Misery City, at least if you live long enough.  What gives your life spark?  How can you make that part of what you do for a living?

If you are totally clueless about this, make a list of what you believe in strongly.  These don’t have to be huge “save the world” kinds of effort–just stuff you value.  Sure, “getting the county to go green” could be on the list.  but so could “arranging flowers with dynamic color combinations.”  It can be something you personally savor (cooking a great cheese omlet) or something that you want for the world (better nutrition for latch key kids).  Try to get at least 5 items on your list; 10 is even better. 

Then make a list of what you’re good at.  Can you organize absolutely anything?  Repair what others are ready to send to the landfill?  Talk to anyone comfortably?  This list reminds you of what you’ve already achieved, which is great.  But it also provides important clues on how you might best make a difference with what you do next.

Mesh the two lists to come up with things you could do about what’s important to you.  Don’t stop to evaluate the ideas, just write down everything that comes to mind.  Once  you finally run out of ideas, take a break (important).  When you come back, go through the list.  Which one (or ones) make you smile, get your heartrate up, or have you wanting to get started right now?  Those are the things that are going to be fun to do at this point in your life.  Now start thinking about how can you make a job out of them.

Mix  The most important thing about work after 60 is setting it up so it’s not the only thing in your life on an ongoing basis.  After 60, the  “career arc” should be starting back down.  (I know, that’s heresy but it’s also true.)  You might still be on fire with what you’ve been doing for 50 years, but you’re likely to be looking for a way to do a bit less of it.    Figuring out this piece is highly personal. 

Some of us want to be able to move through each day changing plans as we go.   Some of us are fine with the same routine every day as long as we have the month of  Februaryoff  to meditate in Bali.  Take the time to figure out what kind of lifestyle is best for you.  (The exercises in Supercharged Retirement can help with this, whether you are going to retire or not.)

Life after 60 is better if you have a clear focus and broad set of challenges.  Getting paid for addressubg them isa bonus.  If you need it, you can make it happen.  But be forewarned.  This idea that everything should happen in a nanosecond because we are “getting older” is wrong.  It’s going to take time.  Believe it or not, you still have it.

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Mary Lloyd is a writer, speaker, and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.   For more, see her website.

A brand new year. What a great time to renew our vows to do all the things we were going to do to make our lives better last year…and the year before…and …

The turning of the year is the perfect time to take stock of where you are trying to go. That part of the old “new year’s resolutions” idea is definitely worth keeping. But the resolutions themselves? Well, maybe we need to take a closer look at that.

It’s easy to make a list of how you want to be better. But is it going to motivate you to do anything more than writing it? A list concentrates all that stuff you think you need to “fix” into one massive dose of self-improvement. That’s a good way to feel pretty inadequate in a hurry.

There’s room to question the whole negative motivation thing, too. Negative motivation is only as strong as the negative consequence. So if you aren’t feeling any real pain because you haven’t gotten to it, committing anew to getting it done is pretty likely to give you more of the same.

Still, it would be nice to get on with some of this stuff—all of this stuff, actually. What’s a good way to use the new year to motivate yourself?

Figure out what usually makes you get things done. If making a list and checking off completed tasks works for you, then that list is a fine idea. But if you get things done by someone else’s deadline, committing to a buddy, or dealing with one change at a time, something other than a list as your New Year’s plan might be wiser.

Be clear about what you can change. It’s so tempting to “want it all” but that can ruin the whole effort. Choose things you value that you truly want to make happen. And be realistic. You are not going to overhaul your personality, your financial situation, and your love life in one twelve month period. In fact some things are never going to change.

Accept that change often comes from messy beginnings. There are times when the change you need to make arrives as an ill-defined, disconcerting restlessness. We’ve all been encouraged to write those measurable, achievable goals. But we don’t always evolve as humans in that orderly, concise manner. If what you need to do is muck around, get on with it instead of trying to jump over the messy part by setting a bunch of easy-to-assess but irrelevant goals.

When you don’t know where you are going, writing a bunch of instructions for getting there (i.e. “New Year’s resolutions”) is a waste of time. In that situation, trying to do one thing every day that addresses what you believe in or want more of in your life might work better. Make it small, doable, and something that you can get done in the time you have each day. It might be as small as spending two minutes (literally) thinking about where you want to take your life. But do something.

New Year’s resolutions too easily become “big deals” that are impossible to accomplish in the crush of everyday life. Then they are de-motivators instead of positive tools for helping yourself change. Using this time of year to assess what you’re doing with your life is a great idea. Limiting yourself to a list of “resolutions” as the outcome? Not so much.

Go beyond the tradition and incorporate an awareness of what it takes to help yourself succeed in how you go about it and what you choose at all. Maybe this year, see what happens if you make the commitment more flexible. When you get off track–and we all do, just pick up the process again once you notice you’re not doing it. (If it’s important enough to want to change in the first place, you will notice.)

That which isn’t growing is dying. Working toward creating something more than what you currently have in your life is wise and good. But don’t set yourself up to fail—and feel like a failure–by making an impressive list of things you don’t really need to do, want to do, or know how to do.

Yeah, baby! We’re looking at a brand new year again. What do you want to do with it?

This article originally appeared in the Januray 2012 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newlsetter Put Old on Hold.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. She’s just released an e-book collection of her articles for Put Old on Hold titled 39 Bites of Wisdom: Little Lessons on Getting Life Right (exclusively on Kindle until March). For more, please see her website.

One good way to make your life better is to notice the ways it already is.  There are so many little bits of someone else’s smarts that we get the benefit of.  Usually we take it all for granted and notice the “not quite right” parts instead.

For a good day, start with your shower.  Hot water, on demand, where you want it on your body.  That wasn’t part of what was here before humanity started asking “what would happen if…?”   How lucky we are that someone figured out fire…and how to heat water with fire…and how to keep water hot in a tank…and get it to the bathroom via a network of pipes.  How wonderful for us that some genius figured out how to blend hot and cold water so that we can have it just the right temperature, turn it hotter–or colder, and turn it off when we didn’t need it any more.  A lot of people put their smarts into what has become a taken-for-granted piece of the morning routine.

And at the breakfast table, how about orange juice–or whatever juice you drink if it’s not “liquid sunshine?”  Someone had to figure out that it would be cool to separate the juice from the fruit–or vegetable.  And someone had to learn how to store it once that was done.  And then how to transport it so that it stayed palatable and safe to drink.  If you make your own juice, someone probably helped you with that process by designing a machine to extract the juice in your very own kitchen. 

The little things are good reminders of the big things.  We are blessed with machines that accomplish many important things for us–everything from getting us to Point B from Point A, be it by car, train, airplane or space shuttle to making us coffee.  We have a wide range of options for gaining information–computers, books, newspapers, personal conversations.  Everything we know depends on someone else’s smarts for us to be able to access it.   Our lives are so much easier because of other people’s effort and ingenuity.

John Donne’s quote “No man is an island” is particularly true when it comes to our convenience.  We are so lucky that so many were so smart about so many “little things.” 

As we end this year, let’s benefit even more by noticing them.  What little pluses do you rely on every day?  The barista’s skill at making your machiatto?  Someone came before to invent a machiatto.  And to figure out that picking, roasting, and grinding coffee beans was worth doing.

The subway system?  The daycare to whom you entrust your child–or your grandchild?  Perhaps a nod to those who invented animal and graham crackers is in order.  Or vitamins that child is willing to ingest.    How about the clothes you’re wearing?  There’s a ton of smarts in a good pair of pants.

These are just bits and pieces of a richly complex life of conveniences.  Our lives are so much easier and more pleasant in so many ways because of someone else’s thinking and ingenuity.  Lucky for us that they wanted to create those things.

In our current jaded take on commerce, the thought might come, “Well, they made money on the deal.  I don’t need to be grateful.” 

Oh come on!  Most of the good that’s come about in the world is because someone wanted to solve a problem, to make something better.  Until recently, it was never about the money.  It was about the satisfaction of improving life for oneself and others.

A little gratitude for all those bits of creative effort and smarts puts you right with the world you’re blessed to live in.  So appreciate that stoplight–what chaos you’d have to endure if it had not been invented!  Appreciate the time clock if you punch one.  It keeps an accurate record of all the time you worked.  So many have done so much to make our lives easier.  Be happy about that–and then see what you can do to add to this glorious collection of little bits of genius.

That’s where the best of life resides–in appreciating what we already have and then adding our own bits to make it even better.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocling Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  She has also just released a collection of essays titled 39 Bites fo Wisdom:  Little Lessons on Getting Life Right.  For more, see her website

The farther you move through life, the more tempting it is to want to have everything under control.  Bad plan.  That strategy is a nice straight road to boredom.  Being a beginner until the day you die is an important piece of creating a good life.  And beginnings are not controlled situations.  Beginnings are messy.

When you move, things are total chaos for a while.  When you start an art project, everything you might need gets hauled out of drawers and closets.  To renovate your yard, you usually create a mud bog at some point in the process.

To make something better, most often, you need to make a total mess of what you already have.

And that’s okay.

In fact, it may be an essential piece of appreciating what you have once you’ve completed the change.  My mom’s yearly version of this process was the family camping trip.  Dad was great about getting everything needed by a family of nine packed in–and on–the car, getting us there, getting the tent set up, etc.  He was really good at making order of the inevitable chaos. 

Mom, however, was better at appreciating the chaos.  “Going camping” was our vacation and that meant new adventures for us kids and the chance to break from the routine for our parents.  But “going camping” also made us all appreciate that routine when we got home and had everything put away.

The disruption and confusion of going in a new direction can be unnerving–and almost always is when you change anything significant.  But that doesn’t mean you don’t do it.  It’s just wise to realize what you’re getting into.

Beginnings involve going in the wrong direction.  When  you start something new, even if you have a full set of instructions (which most things in life don’t have), you make mistakes because the whole idea is new and a challenge to grasp.  Mistakes are every bit as much a part of getting things to go the way you want as the things you get right the first time.  Wrong turns help define the context of what you’re doing and help make it work well.  They’re most valuabe if you use them–figure out what they’ve taught you and then move past them.  But if you can’t get that far about what went wrong, at least relax about the fact that they happen.  When you start something new, there are going to be mistakes.  Sometimes lots of them.

Beginnings usually involve a few restarts.  Thinking that it’s going to be smooth sailing from the get-go just invites frustration.  Redirects are inevitable. Sometimes, you don’t even know where you are trying to go when you start out.   And when you need to change course, you often need to just plain stop before you do so.  So if the project doesn’t keep going at a steady pace, don’t be surprised.  And for heaven’s sake don’t get all torqued about it.  Starting something new takes courage.  Finishing something new takes patience and tolerance–for clutter, confusion, and starting again.

Beginnings often don’t look like beginnings.  Starting in a new direction is often disguised as something old ending.  This probably makes the messiness of a beginning even harder to endure.  When what you had worked for  you and was not something you wanted to change, it’s very hard to get on with the messiness of starting over.  That old reliable version of life was…well…yours, whether it was with a mate who died–or left, a job you lost, or health you took for granted. Pining for what was makes getting on with what’s next a lot more difficult.  Letting go of what you don’t have any more and stepping into the chaos of a new start is the only way to get on with your life.  

Know that the disruption is essential and temporary. It’s easy to begin to feel like the turmoil is never going to go away, but that’s not what’s going on.  Psychologically, being able to predict what’s going to happen is as calming as being able to control it.   Reminding yourself that there’s an end point to the chaos gives you that predictability.

Beginnings are essential.   Beginnings can be intimidating simply because of the disorder and confusion they engender.  Begin anyway.  Having a good life is not a matter of having everything under control.  You need to keep your world expanding and to do that, you have to begin something new.  Again and again and again.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  She’s just released an e-book of essays on living life well titled 39 Bites of Wisdom:  Little Lessons on Getting Life Right.  For more, see her website.

Planning is an interesting challenge for most of us. We either plan too much or plan too little.  (And we tend to make fun of those at the opposite end of the spectrum no matter which we are guilty of.)  Is one right and the other wrong?  And if so, is it planning too little or too much what warrants the boot?

The truth is in the middle, of course.  How thoroughly we plan needs to be a function of what it is we are trying to get done.  But even that can be a matter of perspective. 

If I showed you a photo of a bunch of vertical furroughs and said “We need to get to the top of this,” how would you make it happen?  Would you know what you were dealing with?  It’s easy to get deep into the details of things and miss what’s involved at a broader level.  

In this particular case, the broader perspective paints a much different picture of what we are trying to do.  Getting to “the top of this” is not a matter of running up one of the furrows.  Getting to the top of Devils Tower takes climbing skill, specialized gear, and multiple conversations with the folks at the climber registration desk.  So the first thing to decide when you think about planning anything should be, “Just what am I looking at here?”

Christmas tasks come to mind on this.  We focus on buying the perfect gifts, trimming the tree, decorating the house, getting the outside lights up, remembering to buy eggnog ad nauseam and totally lose track of the basic idea of the season–“joy to the world.”

Planning can make life simpler if you use it at the right times.  It can also make life a whole lot more difficult if you get carried away.  The best example of the latter that I can point to is a family vacation I took long ago with my then husband, my two sons, (ages 12 and 16 at the time) and my then 11 year-old stepdaughter.  The intent was to fly to San Francisco to visit family and see the sights.  I planned the whole nine days to a gnat’s eyelash—and insisted on doing exactly what we planned to do exactly when we had predetermined we were going to do it.  It was awful, and it was all my sweet little planner-manic fault.  What a waste of a good time.

Too little planning isn’t much better though.  Traveling without any plan means you’re looking for a motel room when you’re dog tired and wanting to already be in it.  (You usually end up with worse accommodations at a much higher price if you do this, too–at least from my road trip experience.)  Or maybe you show up in town the week after an event you would have loved to be part of has occurred—that was plastered all over the website if you’d bothered to take a look.  It might also mean you don’t have the resources—time, money, or vacation days–to do the dream thing when you finally notice that the opportunity exists. 

Finding the right blend of planning and not planning is part of our life-long quest for balance.  You need to know what you have to work with and what you are trying to do—to have some idea of where you’re trying to go.  That’s the planning. But you also need to leave room for serendipity and magic.  That’s non-planning.  Remember that as you gear up for your next project.  Having the right balance gives much better results.

A few years ago, I was sending a friend hiking photos on a regular basis because he couldn’t get out on the trail.  The hiking opportunities are slim in early spring in the Pacific Northwest.  Plus, no matter where you hike, your photos will be mostly shades of gray.  So I decided to create a colorful photo. It was Easter Sunday.  I’d learned to “tie dye” eggs with food coloring and foil a few years earlier and chose that as my “medium.”  That was the “planning” part.  I could have just put them on plastic grass in an Easter basket for the photo.  But by nestling those wild eggs in what was available at the moment (the unplanned aspect)–in this case some newly blooming rock cress–I had a much more spectacular photo to send. 

Planning is a tool, not the whole point of the effort.  So remember these four things:
  *  Don’t plan what you can’t control.  (It won’t go the way you want anyway.)
  *  Leave room for magic and last minute detours.
  *  If the plan becomes a burden, simplify it.
  *  Plan only for important outcomes; learn to enjoy doing things on the fly.

That should give you the best of both worlds…and you’ll thrive whether your plans are with planners or non-planners.

This article was previously published in the December 2011 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love and 39 Bites of Wisdom, an e-book just released for the Kindle and coming soon to other e-book stores.   For more, please see her website.

I met supercharged retirement in the flesh yesterday. Cate and Dieter Benz are ablaze with what they believe and what they want to do about it. And they are going in more than one direction with all that enthusiasm.

A few weeks ago Cate emailed me to ask if they could republish a blog post I did on being a good healthcare consumer. At that point, I thought they lived somewhere far away. Turns out they live in the same metro area I do. So we met in person and shared stories over a glass of wine. I came away grinning from ear to ear because what they are doing is what I firmly believe is what we all need to be doing to have satisfying lives once we retire. They are living today with gusto by standing on long-held values and using well developed skills to do something that they believe is important now.

They also seem to have a good sense of how to combine their disparate skills to make a stronger team effort. They are on fire together.

Cate has background in property management and real estate, but has also created bookkeeping software for small business that she currently markets in one of her own small businesses. Dieter made his mark in leadership positions in the automotive and railroad industries and has a weakness for owning historic buildings. While they are still active in those pursuits, their current passion is RestlessBoomers.com, a web resource they are building to help boomers find solid information for navigating that no-man’s-land we call retirement.

They are interesting as a couple, too. This is not a lifelong partnership where they met in high school and have been sweethearts ever since. Though Dieter grew up in Dearborn, Michigan and Cate in Santa Monica, California, they met after they had both moved to the Pacific Northwest. Even then they were willing to use the technology available—they met via an online dating service. (About which, Cate admitted, she had to kiss a lot of frogs before Dieter came on the scene.)

Cate seems to be taking the lead as company nerd, but they are both hot to learn how to use what’s available now in online technology to offer what they are firmly convinced is an essential service for Boomers—a clearinghouse that vets the information before passing it on. Their intent is to provide a trusted resource where boomers can learn of new products and services that they’ve already checked out.

Their vision is to build “a community where millions of likeminded Boomers can share and bond in celebration of accomplishments and struggles while moving forward into the future.” Their mission with RestlessBoomers.com is to help you “achieve exciting new goals and dreams, build confidence, maintain optimum health, grow wealth and obtain true happiness.”

The benefits they want you to reap from accessing the site are:
~ Reducing your cost of living without reducing your living standards.
~ Creating innovative and fun income streams that don’t require large investments or tie you down.
~ Longevity strategies that not only don’t break the bank, but actually reduce healthcare expenses.
~ Medical breakthroughs that affordably and significantly extend life.
~ Protecting and Growing assets at a time when life savings & pensions are under extreme assault.

Only time will tell if they can pull all that off, but they are certainly on fire with making it happen.

Though they are still in development with some sections of the website (and will be for as long as the effort continues given their zeal for employing the latest and best options in what they provide), it’s already worth a look. Check it out at www.restlessboomers.com.

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Mary Lloyd is author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more, see her website.

I’m a bit disgusted with CNN Money. They make it sound like the old are getting richer at the expense of those under 35 when that’s not what’s going on at all.

The Pew Research Center  just released a report that found that younger people do not have as much in assets as people in that same age group 25 years ago while those over 65 have significantly more set aside than their 1984 counterparts.

The resulting CNN article was headlined:  Older Americans are 47 times richer than young.  The article went on to conclude that “Younger Americans have been left behind as the oldest generation has seen wealth surge since the mid-1980s.”  Oh, come on! 

For starters, those over 65 are no longer really “the oldest generation.”  We have a lot of centenarians out there now.  But more to the point, Annalynn Censky suggests that the plight of the younger generation was caused by the older generation.  (Wanna bet how old she is?)  Get real.

The Pew study points to increases in home values over the last 25 years to explain the difference in wealth trends.  And that’s a big piece given that those under 35 who do own homes are likely to have purchased them at inflated prices and are thus carrying significant debt on them.  (Net worth takes debt into account.) 

But I’m a former college statistics instructor.  When I see this kind of stuff, I always ask ”What else could be going on here?”  The answer in this case is 401 K’s.” This is not about “a wealth gap” as much as it is about changes in the approach to retirement funding.

In 1984, most major companies had defined pension plans where the company put money aside, managed it, and used it to pay retired workers a monthly pension.  The company owned the fund and counted those assets on their books. 

In the last 25years, the approach to funding retirement has switched to 401K’s.  The company matches individual contributions as some level and the account is held in the employee’s name.  This makes sense for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is favorable tax treatment and greater flexibility in rehiring workers in some capacity after they’ve retired.  But since these accounts are held by the individual employees, they are now counted as part of their net worth.

The impact of this retirement funding change wasn’t that dramatic when Pew collected data in 1984.  But for those over 65 now, most have at least some of their retirement funding in 401K’s or similar accounts.  Many have all their retirment funds in those accounts.

This is not “the old getting richer.”  It’s simply money that was used the same way but counted differently before.  (Next they will say that corporations are much poorer because they are no longer listing those assets on their books.)

We have enough to worry about in the country right now without the media encouraging anger between classes for any reason.  Younger people do have a big challenge in getting their financial ships effectively launched.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but “the old getting richer at their expense” isn’t one of them.  Offering them that explanation just means it will take them even longer to figure out how to get themselves on the right track.  What a disservice.  Try again CNN.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.