There Are Health Related Benefits to Working Past Age 65

“Our perceptions of working after age 65 have changed over time, and these data suggest that most older adults who are still able to work after the traditional retirement age derive health-related benefits from doing so,” said poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., a primary care physician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and associate professor of internal medicine at U-M. “As we learn more about how loneliness, lack of social connection and isolation intertwine with physical and mental health in older adults, the role of work is important to consider.”Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan. “As more Americans work later in life, poll shows positive health impacts, especially for those over 65.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/02/250211141049.htm (accessed February 12, 2025)

National Poll on Healthy Aging Team. The Intersection of Work, Health, and Well-Being. University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. January/February 2025. Available at https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/25186

The Dark Side of TikTok – Beef Tallow For Skincare

In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites — https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/

Beef tallow (if smeared on your face) may be be comedogenic according to Dr. Lee – The Beef Tallow TikTok Skincare Trend: Here Are The Concernshttps://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2024/12/08/the-beef-tallow-tiktok-skincare-trend-here-are-the-concerns/

This too shall not end well.

The Dark Side of TikTok – Financial Advice?

The Dark Side of Tik Tok – Updated

The Dark Side of Tik Tok – Soak Your Eyeballs in Castor Oil

Scary Charts 12.01.24

Office CMBS Delinquency Rate Spikes to 10.4%, Just Below Worst of Financial Crisis Meltdown. Fastest 2-Year Spike Everhttps://wolfstreet.com/2024/11/30/office-cmbs-delinquency-rate-spikes-to-10-4-just-below-worst-of-financial-crisis-cre-meltdown-fastest-2-year-spike-ever/

Yikes.

The world’s worst countries for binge-drinking https://www.statista.com/chart/5357/the-worlds-worst-countries-for-binge-drinking/

Yikes.

Which Lifestyle Changes Can Make You Live Longer?https://www.statista.com/chart/31766/reduction-in-the-risk-of-premature-death-after-age-40-when-sticking-to-the-lifestyle-factors/

Yikes.

The Worst U.S. States For Binge Drinkinghttps://www.statista.com/chart/12345/the-worst-us-states-for-binge-drinking/

Yikes. But a great day for Scary Charts!

Thoughts on Retirement Realities – 08.25.24

Now that I’ve made My Decision on Retirement the next step is to make a plan for the next 30 years. One of the emerging management practices companies use to address skill shortages is to provide A Broad Range of Flexible Retirement Arrangements. At http://www.aarp.org you will find a ton of articles on phased retirement and other flexible retirement options.

If you’ve been to my blog before I apologize for repeating myself. But for new readers I’m past the “traditional” retirement age of 65. I don’t want to retire nor do I intend to retire for several years. One word describes why I continue to work. FEAR. I’m afraid of living too long and outliving my savings. I am petrified of leaving the workforce and no longer having an earned income stream. Living on a fixed income when the cost of everything keeps going higher scares the shit out of me.

Amidst my fear and anxiety the Social Security Administration approved my application for retirement benefits. When I looked at my monthly benefit I was pleasantly surprised. I then added up our future income sources and calculated that our fixed income from social security plus a small defined benefit pension plan will cover 82.5% of our current monthly expenses. Add in future annual withdrawals from savings and investments The Boss and I are financially OK until our nineties.

My fears are overblown. Check this out:

Conventional financial planning also overstates the income seniors need. That owes partly to planners assuming that seniors require the same amount of money throughout retirement. Yet as economists Michael Hurd and Susanne Rohwedder of the Rand Corp. have shown, average household spending drops by roughly 40% from age 65 to 90. Seniors aren’t running out of money—spending on gifts and donations increases with age. Retirees simply spend less on themselves than financial planners assume.

Planners likewise forget that much of adults’ pre-retirement income is spent on their children. The U.S. estimates that a couple earning roughly $83,000 with two children spends more than $26,000 annually providing food, housing, healthcare and other needs for their children. That’s money parents can’t spend on themselves. Of the income they could devote to their own needs, Social Security will replace around 60%. The upshot is that parents need less savings on top of Social Security than one might think. You Don’t Need to Be a Millionaire to Retire By Andrew G. Biggs https://www.aei.org/op-eds/you-dont-need-to-be-a-millionaire-to-retire/

“I faced a painful reality: I didn’t know anything about anything….”

Andy Clarke – financial writer and editor, a retired CFA dispensing advice to retirees on investing and savings.

A 2021 survey by Pew Research looked at the question another way: It asked people from around the world what made their lives meaningful. In countries such as Italy, Spain, and Sweden, work ranked highly as a source of meaning. In Italy, work was the No. 1 source of meaning, with 43% saying they drew meaning from work. Spaniards ranked work higher than family. But in the US, only 17% mentioned work as a source of meaning. That was a sharp decline from when Pew asked the same question four years prior — a full one-third of Americans mentioned their jobs as a source of meaning in 2017, double the 2021 rate. Increasingly, it seems that more people feel like their jobs don’t matter. Why so many Americans hate their jobshttps://www.businessinsider.com/american-employees-disengaged-work-meaningless-fake-email-jobs-2024-6

Here are some of the biggest reasons some people don’t have enough money saved for retirement:

You don’t make enough money. This is likely the biggest reason most households don’t have enough retirement savings. Some people simply don’t earn a high enough income to have any money left over.

There are personal finance people who would like you to believe it’s all bad habits that cause people to under-fund their retirement.

Many people don’t have any excess remaining after paying for necessities.

Why People Don’t Save Enough For Retirement – https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/08/why-people-dont-save-enough-for-retirement/

We saved as much as we could and if I work a few more years we can plump up our financial cushion. Our expenses will likely be less in the years to come (except someone’s clothing/shoe/Tiny Human budget and that someone is not me). So with a willing employer and continued good health I plan to work full time for a few more years and then ease into retirement by continuing to work part time.

The first five years of my 30 Year Plan is complete. Now I need to work on what to do for the 25 years afterwards.

Going Green – Update 08.23.24

A quick rundown: First, in the middle of the month, news broke that Superpedestrian was shutting down just 18 months after raising $125 million in fresh funding. A few days later, Micromobility.com, formerly known as Helbiz, was delisted from Nasdaq for failing to maintain a share price above $1. Then came the biggest shockwave of all: Bird, the largest e-scooter company in the U.S. with a one-time valuation of $2.5 billion, filed for bankruptcy.

E-scooter companies are going bankrupt. That should alarm you even if you hate themhttps://www.fastcompany.com/91005446/e-scooter-companies-are-going-bankrupt-that-should-alarm-you-even-if-you-hate-them

TBH I never understood this e-scooter thing from the very beginning.

Maybe I’m too risk adverse.

UCLA-led research finds that scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.

The study, which compared national trends in scooter and bicycle injuries during the period, also found that costs to treat those injuries rose five-fold, highlighting the financial strain these injuries pose to the healthcare system — a finding that “underscores a critical juncture for discerning the underlying causes of injuries and informing policies for injury prevention,” the researchers note.

University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Hospitalizations for scooter injuries nearly tripled in the US between 2016 and 2020, UCLA-led research finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 January 2024 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240109121215.htm

Turkey’s Koc Holding said it revoked an agreement with Ford Motor and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution for a joint venture to produce battery cells for commercial electric vehicles…LGES said the three companies had mutually agreed to scrap the plan due to the current pace of consumer electrification adoption.

Ford’s joint battery cell plant in Turkey is scrapped — https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/ford-battery-plant-turkey-dropped-slow-ev-adoption

At the end of Q3 2023, Hertz told investors that significant price cutting during the year had “resulted in lower EV residual values, increasing vehicle depreciation expense and negatively impacting salvage cost.” Additionally, its rental EVs were damaged or crashed more often, and the much higher cost of repairs for Tesla vehicles—on average about 20 percent higher than other EVs—has meant that Hertz’s Teslas earn it less money per vehicle than its other rentals.

Consequently, it’s selling off 20,000 EVs over the course of this year. Currently, the company has over 700 EVs for sale, including 35 Chevrolet Bolts, four Kia EV6s, a single BMW i3 and Nissan Leaf, and then 673 Teslas—552 Model 3s and another 121 Model Ys.

Hertz is selling 20,000 used EVs due to high repair costs — https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/hertz-is-selling-20000-used-evs-due-to-high-repair-costs/

There is a reason for such unusually rapid depreciation. It is precisely because the device is in need of a new battery – and the cost of that battery is (in this case) in the range of $13,000-plus. Not counting the cost of the installation.

Don’t Buy a Used EV — https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024/01/12/dont-buy-a-used-ev/

In Indonesia, nickel extraction is causing environmental and social devastation.

The dirty road to clean energy: How China’s electric vehicle boom is ravaging the environment — https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/

Over the past few years, as Tesla built out its gigafactory near Berlin, it cut down around half a million trees.Kayrros, a company that analyzes satellite images using AI, made the calculation. Tesla cleared around 813 acres of forest between March 2020 and May 2023, according to the analysis. Tesla cut down 500,000 trees to build its German gigafactory

So going green is good?

A Broad Range of Flexible Retirement Arrangements

A Phased Retirement Program

Emory University is one of the few employers that offers a phased retirement program. Here’s a breakdown of how its program works:

  • The phased retirement commitment must be for a defined duration, spanning a minimum of six months to a maximum of three years.
  • Throughout this period, you’ll adjust your work hours, reducing them by anywhere from 10% to 50%, while maintaining a minimum of 20 hours per week.
  • By participating, you agree to retire at the end of the specified time frame.
  • Your pay will be adjusted to reflect the reduced workload during phased retirement.

Source: Phased Retirement: What Does It Mean And How Does It Work? — https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/retirement/phased-retirement/

Sign me up (when I’m ready).

OK Boomer

The workplace is evolving, too, with businesses increasingly seeking the experience and wisdom of senior talent. Currently, 19% of adults 65 and older are employed, compared to 11% in 1987, according to Pew Research. Moreover, individuals aged 65 and older constitute the most rapidly expanding group within the labor force. By 2032, it’s expected that one in every four U.S. workers will be 55 or older, with nearly one in 10 being 65 or older, showcasing the growing presence of seniors in the workplace.

Boomers are defying age norms and you are losing out – https://www.fastcompany.com/91116274/boomers-are-defying-age-norms-and-you-are-losing-out

I am finally on the cutting edge of something.