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Best Places To Retire (Really?)

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“Best Places to Retire” is one of those standard go-to magazine and website articles designed to capture the dreams of Baby Boomers. I get it. They  usually include a mix of criteria like cost-of-living; climate; the economy; health care; recreation and occasionally culture.

Me? I need culture. I need intellectual stimulation not another discussion about someone’s daily hike. Here is a story. I was crossing Broadway on New York’s upper west side a few years ago and stopped to talk with an elderly woman sitting on a bench on the strip that divided the roadway. I asked her why she lives in New York. She said, “I feel free because I can get anywhere on buses or hop in a cab; I can have food and wine delivered right to my door; I have hundreds of restaurants to choose from; the best bagels in the world; the best medical care; I am surrounded by people and energy; I can go to Lincoln Center, the opera, museums, plays all at a discount and people like you stop to talk. Why would I live anywhere else?” By the way, Selma had one big advantage… she lives in a rent control apartment.

You know what? New York is NEVER listed as a best place to live in these articles. Not in US News, Forbes, CNNMoney, CBS News or AARP. What’s up with this? I mean, does living in Utah sound enticing? Guess what? It makes some lists? Have you ever been to Provo? In the winter? Tried to buy a bagel?

OK, New York and a couple of other major cultural centers do make a list. In this case on a smart website from the Milkin Institute’s Best Cities for Successful Aging. Check it out.

 

 

The American Retirement Savings Deficit Meets China

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A central theme in “Boomercide” is our retirement savings deficit. According to Retirement USA, the difference between what Americans will need for retirement and what they have actually saved is $6.6 trillion.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports on the average retirement savings of various age groups. The current figures are scary:

Workers ages 45-54 have saved just under $44,000.

Baby boomers, those aged 55-64, have approximately $65,000 in savings.

People 65+ have saved $56,000. If you retire at 65 and live to 85, that $56,000 doesn’t go very far.

According to Reuters’ article “China slides faster into pensions black hole”, it looks looks like we are not alone. China is graying a an incredibly fast pace and the one child policy is a major issue. Here are some of their numbers:

“Policy makers and economists have long been worried about the financial burden of China’s expanding patchwork of pension schemes, but those concerns have recently escalated as its rural pension scheme took off in the past three years.

The funding shortage is daunting: economists say it could blow out to a whopping $10.8 trillion in the next 20 years from $2.6 trillion in 2010, towering over China’s $3 trillion onshore savings, the biggest hoard of domestic savings in the world.

Funding shortfalls hit 16.5 trillion yuan in 2010, the two economists said, and will quadruple to a stunning 68.2 trillion yuan by 2033. That is about 40 percent of China’s gross domestic product, assuming its economy grows 6 percent a year.

Unless China diverts 80 percent of dividends from listed state firms to pension funds to balance the pension account by 2050, they said, the nation may suffer “enormous fiscal stress”.”

Baby Boomers May Opt For Communes (Again)

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I didn’t ever live in a commune. I visited a few in the 1970’s in California, Massachusetts and Vermont. But the lifestyle just didn’t do it for me. A bit too cozy?  Too “hippy”? Too smiley? Too many vegetables? Who knows. But, it did occur to me recently that people over, say 60, could actually start to think through the benefits of communal living to share costs, space and to connect. As many people realize, it gets harder and harder to connect once you’ve gotten past college, having kids in school and even moving around the country. It is simply more difficult to make close friends.

So, when I saw the article “Baby boomers may opt for communal living again” I did a Huh! Like, why not?

The article points out that we are witnessing a significant societal shift: millions of people are heading to 65+ (10,000 turn 65+ every day), they don’t live near their kids and they want independence. But, that independence does not have to mean living alone (or, oh shit, in a retirement home.)

Baby Boomers said that they were going to change the world. Well, they are: “By force of sheer volume, the (baby boomers) who in 1968 thought they would change the world by 2028 actually will,” said Andrew Carle, founding director of the Program in Senior Housing Administration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

What might I want in a communal experience?

Scenario 1: I see myself living in a tropical land (Chiang Mai Thailand?; San Miguel de Allende Mexico)  in my own cabin in a chain of cabins that share communal services. Food, gardening, media…. brains, conversation, who knows.

Scenario 2: I live in an apartment in a large house in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. This one is a bit more about intellectual stimulation.

The bottom line is that my buddies and I could share some universal services, living costs and laughs. Sure sounds better than moving into Happy Acres Nursing Home.

 

 

 

 

How I Wrote And Published My First Book In Three Months: “Why”

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Decide Why You Are Writing Your Book.

If it’s to get rich, you better look elsewhere. Sure, you might become the next Tim Ferris. But, it ain’t that easy.  Bowker, the company that issues ISBN numbers, more on this later, estimates that they will issue 15,000,000 ISBN numbers for individual books in 2012.

Your odds? 15,000,000 : 1. Maybe less as many books are simply garbage.

OK, so despite this competitive headwind, I decided to write a book. Why? Two reasons.

First:

I did some my-life scenario planning. I considered what I’d like to be doing in a couple of years and thought that it would be great to maintain my home-base in Portland but be able to have a very portable means of generating income while traveling around the world. Writing, combined with the growing ease of self-publishing and expanding eBook market, looked like a plausible path. Now, I am not oblivious to the fact that this won’t be easy. But, I think that if I apply my marketing background to writing books I should succeed.

Second: I think that I have a very compelling proposition for my first book. I am going to commit suicide to help add some control to my financial planning; I’ve picked the date and how to do it. My book, Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide, covers this journey, my view that I am not going to be the only Baby Boomer to do this (Baby Boomer have the highest suicide rates) and the details of the subject of suicide. Additionally, I am a 30-year marketer and know how to do my research and apply it to a rich subject. My smartest friends, strangers and some book editors have vetted the book’s premise.  All think that Boomercide is a powerful subject.

Now you:

Why DO you want to write? I recommend really getting this objective-driven rationale down so you can really focus. Hey, writing can just be for fun. Maybe you’ve had that idea in your head for years and want to get it down on ePaper. Maybe you really want to launch a writing career. Maybe you want to leave something for your kids and grand-kids. Maybe you see the value in writing a book to polish your personal brand to help your career. There are lots of reasons. But, be clear about this and then just start typing.

Everyone is going to approach the act of writing differently. People with full-time jobs have to go to work; dads and moms have to take care of the kids. Finding the time is hard. That said, find it and get going. It feels great. And, your friends will envy you.

There is lots of advice on the web — start here at Joanna Penn’s site The Creative Penn — about how to attack a writing project. Go Google and drive yourself crazy. But, just start and devote whatever time you can. Maybe its time to give up the NFL or Ellen or even Yoga for awhile. Yes, stop and feed the kids but get going on your eBook.