I know that Sherry Cooper is a “star” economist. When she speaks, people listen. BMO should be proud to have her. She is always good for a headline. In fact, if you ask any media producer in radio or TV who is at the top of their Rolodex on economics (do they still use those clumsy things?) you can be sure her name will be at or near the top of the list.
I am, along with all the other quaking retired-on-investments people, an avid reader of Report on Business. Today I was attracted to a story about how to retire. And of course, there was the author of “The New Retirement: How it will Change Our Future,” the one and only Sherry Cooper. To people like her, retirement is all about the time in your life when you no longer work; the time of life when you go south and spend all your time with other creaky old folks pretending to be engaged by taking courses in self-improvement.
The fact is – she thinks retirement is a semi vegetative state in which you are concerned only about how much things cost and can you afford any of them.
So Report on Business quotes her saying: “generally, retirees want to downsize.That usually means, within Canada, moving to a smaller city or town that is within a 60 to 90 minute drive.”
I am thunderstruck. I know that my wife and I should downsize. We did. We sold our house several years ago and live in a lovely 1730 square foot downtown apartment. “(It’s a condo, but we rent. Who at our age, wants to “own” anything.”)
I should add that we violate what was always a rule for “older folks:” don’t increase your possessions. Don’t buy a lot of stuff. Part of keeping you is to keeping buying “stuff. We buy new stuff to hang on our walls. We buy new art glass. We buy new kitchen stuff so I can cook better.
To hear just like her, retirement is all about crawling into a comfortable cocoon. Does it matter that you have grown up in a major city with great restaurant, theatre, museums, galleries and shopping all within walking distance? Does it matter that it may cost a little more? At the heart of her argument is the notion that your prime interest in retirement is to preserve your money by moving to a small town where there may be – if you’re lucky – one movie theatre and a Pizza Hut.
I will get heat from people who move to the chic places like Port Perry or Port Hope. But that’s another argument.
My biggest complaint is that growing older should be a time when you “pull in your horns” and become obsessed with keeping your capital intact.
And as for that 60 to 90 minute drive – it doesn’t happen. Once you are pleasantly ensconced among other seniors waiting for their next rousing game of lawn bowling, you become more and more immobilized.
And I have even talked about some of those grim little “retirement communities” that developers put together in the middle of nowhere, or within a 20 minute drive of a small town you wouldn’t want to live in.
Sherry – wait until you retire.
(For those who don’t know – I am co-author of the book “Don’t Be Blindsided By Retirement” – which looks at life beyond making sure you have enough money.)
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
A LEFTOVER LEFTY
Karl Marx and/or Lenin said that “Capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.”
But on the other hand historians agree that Roosevelt saved Free Enterprise.
And Tommy Douglas referred to Free Enterprise as neither free nor enterprising.
Such are the memories of an aging lefty, out of touch with today’s political realities, seduced perhaps by a portfolio of capitalist securities that guarantee a decent descent into the near-oblivion of getting older.
When I lived in a decent house in Forest Hill Village, owned a spacious 48 foot sailing yacht, and yet struggled to pay our bills, friends referred to me as an affluent Socialist.
I was neither affluent nor was I a hard-line socialist calling for everything from class warfare to bank nationalization to an end to marketplace orthodoxy.
I bore you with all this only to precede the obvious statement: the world, as we all know it, has turned upside down.
The “me-first” generation, the Y generation, and the baby-boomers have all come after all those experiences of my own path through life and a career and a degree of satisfaction.
But now – lo and behold, Hank Paulson, Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury holding his nose and nationalizing the banks. Rather sheepishly I thought, he announced that most Americans hated the idea, but it was necessary,
Does “the end justifies the means” seem to ring out in its dialectic smugness?
Now I observe. I not longer contribute editorially. I pay my taxes and keep my mouth shut.
It is several years since I abandoned my long association with the political left, who have ensnared themselves in a ideological web that permits nothing but “principles” and fails to deal with reality – preferring instead to continue their relentless class warfare,
I am what Layton is not, but perhaps what Treasury Secretary Paulson is: a pragmatist.
The delicious irony that the most free market orthodoxy has had to put government to work; has been obliged, in spite of the nonsense of their less-government ideology, been forced to do what government must do: become the last resort and guardian of all we hold dear.
I was a little stunned to discover that the arch-ideologue and believer in monetary control – Alan Greenspan was once an Ayn Rand follower! Horrid. Everything that smacks of a kind of vicious determinism or what we used to call Darwinian economics happened on his watch.
The dust may settle soon, but the ineluctable truth is that the forces of monetary and fiscal conservatism have folded their cards and succumbed to reality.
Whether or not it work remains to be seen.
My ancient lefty bones feel warmer.
But on the other hand historians agree that Roosevelt saved Free Enterprise.
And Tommy Douglas referred to Free Enterprise as neither free nor enterprising.
Such are the memories of an aging lefty, out of touch with today’s political realities, seduced perhaps by a portfolio of capitalist securities that guarantee a decent descent into the near-oblivion of getting older.
When I lived in a decent house in Forest Hill Village, owned a spacious 48 foot sailing yacht, and yet struggled to pay our bills, friends referred to me as an affluent Socialist.
I was neither affluent nor was I a hard-line socialist calling for everything from class warfare to bank nationalization to an end to marketplace orthodoxy.
I bore you with all this only to precede the obvious statement: the world, as we all know it, has turned upside down.
The “me-first” generation, the Y generation, and the baby-boomers have all come after all those experiences of my own path through life and a career and a degree of satisfaction.
But now – lo and behold, Hank Paulson, Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury holding his nose and nationalizing the banks. Rather sheepishly I thought, he announced that most Americans hated the idea, but it was necessary,
Does “the end justifies the means” seem to ring out in its dialectic smugness?
Now I observe. I not longer contribute editorially. I pay my taxes and keep my mouth shut.
It is several years since I abandoned my long association with the political left, who have ensnared themselves in a ideological web that permits nothing but “principles” and fails to deal with reality – preferring instead to continue their relentless class warfare,
I am what Layton is not, but perhaps what Treasury Secretary Paulson is: a pragmatist.
The delicious irony that the most free market orthodoxy has had to put government to work; has been obliged, in spite of the nonsense of their less-government ideology, been forced to do what government must do: become the last resort and guardian of all we hold dear.
I was a little stunned to discover that the arch-ideologue and believer in monetary control – Alan Greenspan was once an Ayn Rand follower! Horrid. Everything that smacks of a kind of vicious determinism or what we used to call Darwinian economics happened on his watch.
The dust may settle soon, but the ineluctable truth is that the forces of monetary and fiscal conservatism have folded their cards and succumbed to reality.
Whether or not it work remains to be seen.
My ancient lefty bones feel warmer.
Monday, October 6, 2008
BDY VS BRAIN
You wouldn’t expect to have an awakening (I hesitate to call it a revelation or an epiphany) in the hill country of Texas – but I did. Visiting my daughter and her husband, and our three grandsons in Austin, I stumbled across a book that promises a “6 step age-defying program!” (Exclamation point mine.).
There is not a lot to do, so my wife and I fall back on our obsession: crossword puzzles. We read a lot, and I bought an electronic keyboard so I could practice every day. In other words, we continue to exercise our brains.
Let me back up. One of the axioms for a happy retirement is fitness – fitness of body and fitness of mind. If that sounds like the beginning of a Sunday homily – you’ll have to forgive me.
In my book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement” I remind you that taking physical stock of yourself is imperative. A visit to your doctor for a complete evaluation of your body (you’’ have to go elsewhere for your mind) is essential. It is simply “taking stock.”
But just as important of course, is fitness of mind. It has long been believed that you can ward off or at least retard, the mental dysfunction that accompanies aging with mental exercise – hence the crosswords and the piano lessons and the reading...
I go through dozens of puzzles every day from the almost unlimited collection of New York Times puzzle books. The daily puzzles are smaller and start on Monday with an easy one but by Saturday are so difficult you are close to despair. But you solder on, lubricating the brain. You hope.
Barnes and Noble have the best selection. That is where is stumbled across “Crosswords to Keep Your Brain Young, edited by Will Storz with advice from Majid Fatuhi M.D. PhD.of the Lifebridge Health Brain and Spine Institute at Harvard.
Wow! Proof at last that I can push back brain decay with puzzles. But the good doctors has much more to say from mnemonics to brain and vocabulary exercise.
He reminds us that “each of the 100 billion cells in the human brain has the capacity to grow. The brain’s capacity is endless.” He really gets to me with this: “It was once assumed that learning was limited to children. New studies indicate that indeed old dogs can learn new tricks.” You can, he says “soak up new skills.”
Nothing is more perilous to me at least, that the trip into memory loss. When I sat down to write this piece, I had to stop and ask my wife (who always comes up with the answers) what the word for sudden revelation – like Paul on the road to Damascus – and of course she snapped it out like a twenty year old,
I still have more Doctor Fatuhi to read and he will tell me how to expand my range of knowledge, increase my vocabulary, and remember people’s names.
Which should bring me to a funny ending. My career as a gag writer (I’m serious) is over.
There is not a lot to do, so my wife and I fall back on our obsession: crossword puzzles. We read a lot, and I bought an electronic keyboard so I could practice every day. In other words, we continue to exercise our brains.
Let me back up. One of the axioms for a happy retirement is fitness – fitness of body and fitness of mind. If that sounds like the beginning of a Sunday homily – you’ll have to forgive me.
In my book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement” I remind you that taking physical stock of yourself is imperative. A visit to your doctor for a complete evaluation of your body (you’’ have to go elsewhere for your mind) is essential. It is simply “taking stock.”
But just as important of course, is fitness of mind. It has long been believed that you can ward off or at least retard, the mental dysfunction that accompanies aging with mental exercise – hence the crosswords and the piano lessons and the reading...
I go through dozens of puzzles every day from the almost unlimited collection of New York Times puzzle books. The daily puzzles are smaller and start on Monday with an easy one but by Saturday are so difficult you are close to despair. But you solder on, lubricating the brain. You hope.
Barnes and Noble have the best selection. That is where is stumbled across “Crosswords to Keep Your Brain Young, edited by Will Storz with advice from Majid Fatuhi M.D. PhD.of the Lifebridge Health Brain and Spine Institute at Harvard.
Wow! Proof at last that I can push back brain decay with puzzles. But the good doctors has much more to say from mnemonics to brain and vocabulary exercise.
He reminds us that “each of the 100 billion cells in the human brain has the capacity to grow. The brain’s capacity is endless.” He really gets to me with this: “It was once assumed that learning was limited to children. New studies indicate that indeed old dogs can learn new tricks.” You can, he says “soak up new skills.”
Nothing is more perilous to me at least, that the trip into memory loss. When I sat down to write this piece, I had to stop and ask my wife (who always comes up with the answers) what the word for sudden revelation – like Paul on the road to Damascus – and of course she snapped it out like a twenty year old,
I still have more Doctor Fatuhi to read and he will tell me how to expand my range of knowledge, increase my vocabulary, and remember people’s names.
Which should bring me to a funny ending. My career as a gag writer (I’m serious) is over.
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