As a kid, it was how many weeks of allowance would buy what you yearned for. But as you move through life, the complexities of financial planning increase. That’s not bad, just something to be aware of.

It’s hard to know how much is “enough” for what might come along after you stop working. And it’s hard not to get sucked into valuing yourself by the number of digits in your investment account–if you have one–once work no longer provides an identity.  But if you have determined what’s enough and are fortunate enough to have more than that, why are you sitting on the rest?  

Those of us over 50 hold over 75% of all the financial assets in the US. What are we doing with that?

I’m not stumping for the non-profits with that question. It’s a quality of life issue that each of us answers a different way.  Those answers depend on the money available, sure.  But the effectiveness of these decisions also depends how well we assess our priorities as we make money decisions.

Are you telling yourself you “don’t need” that new furniture  you really want when there’s money available for it? When you do that, you’re living from a scarcity mentality that impoverishes your whole life, not just your financial decisions.

The flip side of this issue deserves a good look, too. Do you need to get your teeth fixed but can’t because you “don’t have the money for it”–while you continue to smoke or head for the casino three nights a week?  It’s all too easy to make decisions based on childish emotions or miserly adult ways when neither serves you well.

These aspects of financial planning are important to consider no matter how much or how little money you have to work with.  “How much” isn’t the operative phrase here.  “How well” works better.  As in “How well will doing this meet my needs?”

I grew up in a large family that didn’t have money to spare. ” We just did things a bit differently than some of the other families in the neighborhood. Mom made the soup we ate. (We naively assumed Campbell’s was a luxury.) We created many of our toys and came up with our own games complete with rules. The Mother Lode in all that is that every single one of us is creative as an adult–in how we decorate our homes, how we solve our problems, how we live our lives.   Our parents blessed with wisdom on how to use our money well rather than savvy on how to amass a lot of it.

Financial planning is not just a matter of “having enough money.” It’s about balancing what you have with what you believe in and want to do–whether it’s a world cruise, starting an heirloom vegetable seed business, funding a school in a Third World village, or treating yourself to a cookie. 

Give yourself the gift of good thought in all this. it’s not about how much money you have. It’s a about what you choose and how it enhances your life.
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Mary Lloyd is a speaker, consultant, and coach and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more see her website.    She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

We all agree stress is bad, but who should fix it? You or the “stressor?”

We answer that question differently, depending on how we view the world.  Some of us see ourselves as the primary source of change.  Some of us expect others to change to make our lives better.

Sounds like eye color or skin tone, right?–something you just are and accept for the rest of your life.  

Not so fast.  Those who assume others decide how their lives are going to go are asking for problems they don’t need to have.   When you expect someone else to make the decisions, take the lead, and “be the master” you increase your chances of a stroke, heart attack and dying sooner in general.  Do you really want to do that?

Yes, there are times when someone else gets to decide what you are going to do.  Work, marriage, and parenthood are all rife with these situations.  But it’s one thing to take work direction (even from a two-week old daughter) and another to assume subordinate status.  If life is stressing you big time, check out how you are seeing the world.  The big difference between humans and other organisms is that we have the power to choose.

When your start to feel stressed, look at how you are seeing the situation.  Do the work because you choose to do it, not because “you have to.”   Don’t give up your right to choose even when the other alternatives are so unacceptable you would never consider them.  And while you’re at it, hold on tight to your sense of why you are doing things.  That makes you the master of your own fate rather than a pawn in the game of Life.

Jonah Lehrer’s article in the August 2010 issue of Wired magazine does a nice job of highlighting the physical negatives of being subordinate.  In short, it’s a highly stressful role.  Much of that article explores the health effects of being a low ranking baboon (literally), but the implications go well beyond primate research.

The brain actually changes in a subordinate situation. Stress response mechanisms take priority and learning and memory activities decline.  We become less effective as problem solvers and even more vulnerable to stress when we accept subordinate status.   None of this is necessary, but it’s automatic if you aren’t paying attention.

Lehrer goes on to recommend seven steps you can take to reduce stress:

1.  Make friends

2.  Drink in moderation.  (Alcohol reduces anxiety.)

3.  Get enough sleep.

4.  Don’t fight.

5.  Confront your fears.

6.  Medidate.

7.  Don’t force yourself to exercise.

I would add one more to that list.

8.  Always remember you’re in charge of  your own life.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker, consultant, and coach and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her website is http://www.mining-silver.com/

Deciding where to live in retirement is not as simple as we tend to want to make it.  I never thought I’d see my words on a real estate blog, but when Mary Sallman with the Las Brisas retirement community in the Texas Hill County suggested  a guest post about how to do a good job of making that decision, it made perfect sense. 

So…check out the Las Brisas blog –and my guest post of July 14.

Well-being is more dependent on the way you see things than most of us realize.  Being mindful instead of letting someone else’s labels define you, your health, your challenges, even your strengths can make a major difference in the quality of your life.

At the moment, I’m into Ellen Langer’s book Counterclockwise:  Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.  This isn’t a New Age exhortation to do affirmations and expect blessings.  Langer is a social psychologist who’s been researching the mind/body link scientifically for decades.  She and her students at Harvard have done study after study with amazing results about the power of little things that are conveyed in words. 

In the study for which the book was titled, they took groups of nursing home men on a weeklong retreat where they recreated the year 1959.  One group of men was treated as if it were that time.  The other was asked to reminisce about that year while the same music, movies, etc. played. 

Both groups came out of the experience with their hearing and memory improved.  On many measurable dimensions, they “got younger.”  Astounding results, to be sure.  But even more amazing, those who actually re-lived the year improved more than the others–on intelligence tests, posture, gait, height and weight.   Photos of them taken at the end of the week were judged by people unaware of the study to be younger than the ones taken at the beginning of the week. 

In Langer’s words, “It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us, but rather our mindset about our physical limits.”  What are you doing about that?  What are you thinking?

Henry Ford’s famous quote, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” is another way to consider this phenomenon.  We set ourselves up to succeed or stumble, sail through challenges or become chronically ill with what we tell ourselves.  That’s why some people can live through Dachau and some have a heart attack just dealing with traffic on Monday morning.

One of the places that has a lot of potential for a better life is how we perceive control.  Are you the only one who knows the right way to do things?  Does everyone else need your perspective to get things done?  That’s not reality, but some of us take on a lot of stress assuming that.

How about the opposite—where you assume you have no control?  If you tell yourself that someone else has to make you happy, improve your work situation, help you eat better, or make you lose weight, you’re eliminating the one person who can really make any of those things happen—YOU.

The truth is, you don’t have all the control and never will.  But you do have more than “none.”  All of us do.

Another perspective that works against our well-being is the idea that aging is linear and inevitable.  Once one piece of your body starts to have problems, the rest will follow.  The path is inalterable.  Studies support that people who see health problems as a temporary blip recover better than those who see their illness as the first step in the staircase down to total infirmity.

Even though social scientists confirm the importance of consciously choosing how we see the world and our place in it, it’s not that easy.  The vast majority of the images and ideas we hear, watch, and relate to are mind-numbing and contagious.  Each of us is different in many, many ways.  But it’s natural for a society to expect similarities.  You have to be your own watchdog on this.  Forgetting one person’s name doesn’t mean your memory is gone.  Many older people remember more than those two generations younger.  (My dad could still tell you the names of the guys he served with in WWII when he died in 2001.)

The mind-body link is a huge piece of good health.  Much of modern medicine ignores it. Society ignores it.  That doesn’t mean you have to.  Pay attention to what you are telling yourself all day every day.  Get rid of the junk that implies “less than,” “unable,” or “decline.”  It’s far worse for you than a greasy burger with fries and a giant milkshake. 

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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 about her and her work, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com/.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com. 

This article originally appeared in the July 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter, Put Old on Hold.

Our right to freedom in the US is broader than carrying guns and assemblying to protest or support something.    We also have freedom of information and freedom to pursue what we believe in.  What do we do with all that?

It’s too easy as Americans to equate our beautiful right to the freedoms we enjoy as citizens with a “don’t fence me in” attitude.  I can be what I want and do what I want (as long as I do no harm) and that’s it.   The “I can be me” of it is just the start though.  How good a “me” can you be?  In the US, we have a lot of protection for taking ourselves to the top.

But to the top of what?  Too often lately, it’s been to the top story of greed or petty bickering, to the top of who makes the most as a CEO or sports figure, to the top of what a nun I had in 7th grade aptly termed “a manure pile.”  None of that stuff is worth the effort to get it in the long run.

Here in the US, we can do more than that.  As a nation, we’re languishing because we’re not.  If we want to truly be Americans, then it’s time to accept that sometimes life is hard and that blaming someone else instead of dealing with it is cowardly.  We need to get off this bickering kick in the halls of decision-making and get serious about finding solutions.  “My” way only works when you’re the only one involved in the situation.  “Our” way is always the product of negotiation, good will, and respect–and a desire to get on with what needs to be done.

Nothing in our Constitution holds holy our right to be right.  That document–and everything this country is built on–comes instead from our right to do right.

The next time you decide someone else is wrong, remember this.  Find a solution not a fight over who’s gonna win the right to be right.

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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 current focus is on helping 50+ workers develop effective job search skills and strategies.  Her website is http://www.mining-silver.com/ She can be contacted via her website.

The “tennis match that wouldn’t end” is a lesson for all of us.  When John Isner and Nicholas Mahut played at Wimbledon this week it took three days (11 hours and 5 minutes of actual play) and 183 games to decide the winner.  By the time it was finished, people all over the world were shaking their heads.  That’s a lot of tennis.

It was sad to have a loser in that match, since both put so much into it.  But we are all winners in what they demonstrated for us.  We got a refresher course in how to keep going.  Many of us are probably thinking differently about whatever it was that we were ready to give up on:  “If those guys could play so hard for so long, maybe I can put a little bit more into this.”

Perserverance.  We learn it as we go through life, but when life is easy, the lessons are pretty rare.    Then when times get tough, it’s hard to remember how to do it.  These guys gave a great demonstration.

As older workers and members of society, it’s even easier to just give up.  When we are looking for a job, there’s often the option of “just retiring” in the back of our heads.  When we are trying to find the right volunteer niche, it’s easy to quit the first time it doesn’t go well.  When we decide to take control of our health, letting the medical establishment decide is merely a matter of getting distracted from your mission.

We need to perservere.  To chase the dreams that we’ve not yet lived.  To create a lifestyle that has meaning and joy.  To respect the uniqueness of our own bodies in how we manage our health.  To not just love but lust for being a part of something good.

We can do that–but only if we make ourselves do that.  It may not be a matter of winning at Wimbledon, but it’s a matter of winning at life.

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

Just because you made a certain wage before doesn’t mean you’ll get it now.

One of the problems that keeps cropping up with why employers don’t want to hire older workers is salary expectations–or so they say.  Taking the time to look at where you are on this issue is important whether you are in the hunt for a new position or not.  Keeping your current company afloat may also be a matter of getting creative–taking additional flexibility in lieu of payroll dollars for example.

All too often, salary is a matter of ego.  “I am a success because I make a six figure income.”   (I’m convinced that’s why CEO’s get the ridiculous salaries they do, especially when they get in front of Congress to explain their company’s bad decisions and claim they knew nothing about what was going on.  A leader who’s out of the loop isn’t worth a damn.)  So let’s get rid of this baloney right now.  We are not ranked by salary in terms of our worth as human beings.

Some people think that just because they “need” a certain amount to live, they should be paid that, too.  That might work in a communist state (which have been pretty much proven not to work well overall).  But it’s completely at odds with how capitalism works.    A fair wage, yes,  but not more than that just because it makes your life work better.

Capitalism revolves around supply and demand.  If you want to make better money, you do the things that are in short supply.  At the same time, whatever you do you need to do well, so you also need to be working toward doing what you love.   When you have it right, you will find yourself saying “I can’t believe they pay me to do this!”

Here are a few dead ends you want to avoid:

• I should be making what everyone else is making at this job.   This is true to a point, but only if you are doing the same amount of work, of the same complexity, with the same amount of supervision to get it done,  in the same amount of time.  If you are being paid less, find out why.  Don’t assume it’s just because your boss–or HR or “the Company”–wants to be unfair.
• I should be making at least as much as I made at my last job.  What’s going on in this job has no relation to what you did before.  And in this market, even if you are a superstar, you are likely to see salary cuts.
• I should make more because I’ve been here longer.  Nope…not if you are doing the same work as everyone else.  But you probably do because seniority has been a union issue for at least half a century.   In this economic climate, that higher salary is like painting a bull’s eye on yourself.    If you can afford it, let the decision makers know you’d be willing to take a salary cut if they start talking lay-offs.

The “Great Recession” has pushed the reset button on salary growth.  It’s also given us a huge chance to use other things as elements of a compensation package.  Free time is often more valuable than the cut in pay to go to a four day (8 hour ) week.  The chance to cross train may be worth more to you than the raise you are suppposed to get.

With cities and states cutting budgets to make ends meet, it’s obvious we aren’t out of the weeds yet.  One of the ways to keep your own path clear is to be willing to flex on salary when needed.  You’re worth as a human doesn’t rest on what you make.

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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 www.mining-silver.com.

Announcing a no-cost, non-surgical way to look younger!!!

Smile.

We spend a lot of time, money, and effort trying to “make the most of what we’ve got” but there really is a lot of truth to the suggestion that inner beauty improves your looks far more effectively.  And inner beauty is totally a matter of personal choices rather than medical advances.

We tend to believe that the things we want most are going to cost us.  Beauty (or “handsomeness” if you prefer) is one of those things.  But beauty is more about what you’re thinking than which face cream you are using.  Or how many cosmetic surgery procedures you can afford.

There are even more pluses to inner beauty than looking good, too.  Research has demonstrated a strong correlation between a positive attitude and both longevity and good health.  So if you want to be beautiful, healthy, and long-lived, work on your smile.

Most Friday nights I dance to rock ‘n roll with my friend Diane.  She is a pretty woman in the commercial sense of the word.  But when she dances, she becomes ten times more beautiful—because she beams the whole time she is on the dance floor.  She also talks to everyone in the place and learns about them in neighborly terms.  (Last night, we went to a new place and the first couple with whom she struck up a conversation was from Scotland!)  This woman literally lights up the room with her attitude.  She’s one of my favorite role models.

Choosing to be happy with whatever the day brings is a major plus for health reasons.  Choosing to share a smile every chance you get is better than Botox for how you come across.

So…how do you keep that smile?

• Choose not to judge other people.  Judging is stern work.  Look in the mirror the next time you’re in the middle of deciding someone else is wrong.  You’re scowling, right?  Most of our judgments are unnecessary—no action resulted from what you decreed.  You just felt some negative thought—self-righteousness or irritation maybe—and then hung onto it like it was Holy Writ.

Even worse, we are often wrong in what we decide is the case.  One of my favorite sayings is “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.”   It keeps me from berating someone else’s dumb choice—like cutting me off on the freeway.  “They just didn’t know any better” leaves me with an easy smile.   “That arrogant bastard in the disgusting Hummer should be ticketed for aggressive driving” doesn’t keep me as serene.  Or as attractive.

• Notice the good stuff in your day.   It doesn’t have to be huge to make a difference.  I once sat in traffic admiring the shade of red in the stoplight.  I was on my way to an appointment with a shrink—and that stoplight made me realize my world was fine and I didn’t need to see her any more.

• Hope.  Believe in the goodness of life and your own potential.  Even if your prospects aren’t promising at the moment, keep trying and keep going.  Hope is a key element of a good life but we don’t tend to focus on it until we’ve lost it.  Do all you can to keep yours in your life all the time.

• Let it go.  We tend to want to control what goes on in our lives—to be the one who decides how things are going to be.  When things don’t go the way we want, we dwell on it, replaying the dissatisfying situation again and again.  All this does is make you look ugly (really!).  Letting go of whatever happened five minutes ago keeps you ready for whatever is coming next.  It also gives your mind enough space to notice the good stuff that’s going on now. Smiling in the now is priceless.

If you want to look young forever, be happy.  There’s no predetermining gene for this.  Anyone at all can learn to smile.   It starts with being happy and being happy is a choice.  Choose to be happy and smile.  The more you do, the more you will—and the more beautiful you will be on an on-going basis.

This post originally appeared in the June 2010 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.  For more about her and her work, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.

We’re setting ourselves–and the country–up by relegating anyone over 60 to the “discard pile.”  How long are we going to keep doing this same dumb thing?

Why are we setting these people adrift instead of using what they know and what they are good at?  As the bulge that is the baby boom moves into the “retirement” phase of life, the cost of this folly will skyrocket.  Is that what we want our grandkids paying for?

The current assumption is that as you age, you become inept, but research doesn’t support that. Seventy percent of what we blame on aging is the result of lousy lifestyle choices.

The prevailing wisdom is that those who can afford to want to retire.  But in a 2005 study of over 3000 baby boomers, the Merrill Lynch Foundation found that only 17% wanted that lifestyle.

Every time we “retire” someone, we lose their expertise.  Younger workers could be a lot better at what they do a lot faster if the “old pros” were serving as mentors.   We lose their understanding of the context in which the work got done–and the resulting problem-solving, negotiating, and customer support advantages.   We lose a ton of information about what works and what doesn’t across the spectrum of the jobs they were doing.

The system we have in place, assumes our most experienced, skilled workers want and need to “disappear”  at a specific age.  We pay them to do so.   What’s the benefit of that?

Even worse, the consequences  of not having a purpose in life are dire. People who have a reason to get up in the morning stay a lot healthier and live longer.  It’s a double whammy for the country–first we pay them not to work and then we pay for healthcare they may not have even needed if they were working.

Worst of all though, we are each setting ourselves up for this same frustrating decline into perceived uselessness by letting the system continue as is.

There a few things we need to accept:

• Every person in society deserves a purpose and needs to be encouraged to claim it.
• Not all important jobs are full time.  Some aren’t even paid.
• “Old” is not a disease.   Wrinkles don’t erase competence.
• Things don’t improve by having capable people sitting around doing nothing.

The idea that youth and progress are the only things that have value  has been around since the Second Great Awakening that began around 1825.  It’s time to let go of this outdated thinking and grab onto something more innovative. The challenge is not in chosing between young and old. The true test of our mettle as a nation and as individuals is in becoming a culture that values–and uses–both the freshness of its youth and the wisdom of its elders.

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Mary Lloyd is CEO of Mining Silver LLC, a company dedicated to using the potential of those over 50 better. She’s author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more, visit her website.

Having enough money doesn’t mean you need to retire–look at Warren Buffet…

Check out Mary Lloyd’s May 27 guest post on Karma Kitaj’s blog Retirement as You Want It/.