“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Sometimes things in life work out as planned. Sometimes they don’t. This time the plan is going as planned. At my annual wellness check up everything turned out fine except for my blood pressure. The two readings taken showed an elevated systolic and per Doctor’s orders I had to buy a BP machine which set me back $36 plus tax. I was instructed to keep a log for two weeks. For grins, I checked my online account to see what Dr. Lewis wrote for the office visit notes. No mention whatsoever regarding my BP readings. Probably because both of us felt this wasn’t a huge problem. The Boss started showing some concern and I had to report my pressures to her every day. Again I felt this wasn’t a worrisome medical issue. Besides if the diagnosis was hypertension I was looking at daily Lisinopril 10 mg, no big deal.
After two weeks I sent Dr. Lewis my log. She replied later that day.
Thank you for diligently keeping track of your blood pressure readings. I see that your readings have been fairly consistent. Yes you can stop watching it. If you feel fatigued or headaches please recheck it.
Sincerely, KL
I survived another annual wellness check. The Road to 70 is still pretty smooth. But the ride is not as smooth for others.
A CivicScience survey of nearly 3,000 respondents conducted between March and May 2024 reported 61% of those aged 55 and over say they won’t be able to retire by 65, and 53% will need to keep working even when they do retire. Boomers and Beyond: 5 Ways To Make Extra Money if You Retire in Your 70s – https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/boomers-ways-make-extra-money-retire-70s/.
I admit to falling for the clickbait. Of course I wanted to know about 5 ways to make extra money if I retire in my 70’s. And I’m a Boomer. So I read the article. Here are the 5 ways to make extra money:
Add Money to a High-Yield Savings Account
Buy Dividend Stocks
Rent Out Unused Space in Your Home
Become a Dog Walker
Become a Ride-Share Driver
What is the average monthly benefit for a retired worker? The estimated average monthly Social Security retirement benefit for January 2024 is $1,907. https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-01903
Hmm…
I wrote back in May that my focus was simple. All I had to do was stay healthy and stay connected with an employer willing to keep an Old Guy with a particular set of skills on the payroll. More Random Thoughts on Retirement – The Dot Project May 2024. At this point I hope to become a dog walker only if I want to, not if I have to. Prioritize your health. Save as much as you can. Plan on living AND working longer. Defer collecting Social Security retirement until you turn 70 (if you can). Read my other blog https://garyskitchen.net/. Tell your friends and family you found this blog written by an Old Guy on what it takes to become an Old Guy. They’ll love you for this.
The Boss once again is outside in the yard doing her thing. I’m inside doing my thing, drinking coffee, reading, writing. One of my addictions is staying current with the news and this post popped up in my RSS feed. At my age it doesn’t take much prompting for me to reflect on retirement. The Road to 70 is nearly complete. Soon I’ll be writing the next chapter of life The Road to 75. Dear Reader, if this sounds “old”, it is.
Critical thinking and understanding risk are the cornerstones of what I do. So when I have an opportunity to validate or repudiate the key assumptions in my plans I am in my Happy Place. When I decided not to retire several years ago my personal mantra focused on the following two critical variables in my retirement planning:
Stay healthy.
Find a willing employer.
Number One. I just had my annual wellness checkup. Bloodwork normal. Tendency towards obesity curtailed. Blood pressure elevated on two readings. Per Doctor’s orders I bought a BP machine and started keeping a log. All of my readings at home have been normal. A little white coat effect and the excitement of seeing my physician (Redhead Effect)…all good.
Number Two. Don’t underestimate how essential having or finding an employer who will pay you to work as you get older. Too many of us know the feeling of being cast out to the street for becoming too “old”.
As I prepare to write the next chapter it’s time to revisit and revise the two most important goals that got me to where I am. After some considerable time and effort here are my revised goals for the next five years.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs
Let’s be honest: If you keeled over at 68, it would be a family tragedy—but it wouldn’t be a financial one. At that juncture, all your financial problems would be over, and your family would likely be better off financially because they’d inherit your retirement nest egg, which would probably still be largely intact. Instead, the real financial risk is living to a ripe old age. That raises the question: As you make your retirement plans, shouldn’t you care more about the live version of your future self, rather than the dead one?
Today’s life expectancies hover just below eighty, and if you reach the milestone of seventy they jump to the mid eighties. Due to advances in medicine and healthier lifestyles, reaching your nineties or even 100 is more realistic than ever. How do you ensure that you don’t run out of money? The answer is to start saving more now and plan to work longer. You’re Going to Live Past 90. Congrats! Here’s How to Pay For It. — https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a60647995/how-to-afford-living-to-100/
A Big Dot
A little over four and a half years ago at the tender age of 65 my boss asked me if I was planning on retiring or if I wanted to continue working. I said I wanted to continue working. My FRA (full retirement age) for social security retirement benefits was still nearly a year away and I really didn’t want to collect a reduced benefit. As I connect the dots this decision turned out to be a Big Dot. Covid happened. Then inflation soared and continues to soar making everything cost more. I’m glad I didn’t retire back then and lock in a lower monthly lifetime benefit before the cost of everything went up.
Sometimes things in life work out as planned. Sometimes they don’t. When I decided to stay in the workforce the strategy was to wait until age 70 to collect social security benefits. The math was compelling.
My focus was simple. All I had to do was stay healthy and stay connected with an employer willing to keep an Old Guy with a particular set of skills on the payroll.
My particular set of skills is understanding what kills people.
The Road to 70 is now just a short trip. Just 10% of people in one survey planned to wait until age 70 to claim Social Security – https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/08/survey-just-10percent-plan-to-wait-until-age-70-to-claim-social-security.html. Time for another Big Dot related to this Big Dot. I think I’ll keep working for another 3-5 years, contingent upon the same variables of sustained good health and a willing employer. I have about another 30 years to go, so why not do a few more years of work?
In the pursuit of “fine” to “great,” we chase products. Through no fault of our own, we fall prey to messaging from social media users, algorithms, and expert marketers, urging us that this shampoo or this rug will shift the scales toward enoughness. “This is how the marketplace continues to work,” says Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, “which is by amplifying our inadequacies and insecurities.”
Baked into these social platforms is a natural ecosystem for comparison. In the past, people weighed themselves against celebrities in the media and those within their immediate social circles, Duffy says. Now, we can compare ourselves to the idealized version of millions of strangers online — who may be perpetuating an aesthetic trend inspiring us to buy in order to participate.
We recently took a trip to Texas with a trunk load full of old Legos to a Lego store that buys and sells Legos. Our entire intent was to de-clutter and get rid of some old sets and extra pieces. We were ready to donate the stuff. Give it away to Goodwill or another charity.
Well…
A Goodwill in Pennsylvania just sold a rare 14-karat gold Lego piece for $18,101.
Adverse events are common in those using GLP-1 agonists, but the vast majority of these are minor. GI adverse effects are most common (20-70% of patients). Greater rate of GI effects with higher doses.
Most common problems: nausea (overall most common), vomiting, and diarrhea. Others included abdominal pain, dyspepsia, and constipation.
Symptoms are typically more severe within the first four weeks of therapy or with sudden escalation of therapy and tend to decrease over time.
Thought to be due to reduced gastric emptying and activation of centers involved in appetite regulation and nausea.
Severe diarrhea and vomiting may lead to volume loss, dehydration, and hypotension (not common).
There is an association with pancreatitis. GLP-1 agonists may stimulate pancreatic islet beta cells and exocrine duct cells leading to overgrowth and smaller duct size, which increase the pancreatic weight and risk of ductal occlusion.
Retrospective study published in 2022 of 81,752 adverse events associated with GLP-1 agonist therapy found an increased risk of pancreatitis, particularly with liraglutide (ROR 32.67; 95% CI 29.44-36.25). 2023 observational study found increased risk of pancreatitis (adjusted HR of 9.09, 95% CI 1.25-66).
Other GI issues include gallbladder and biliary tract disease (usually after 26 weeks of therapy and included cholelithiasis, cholecystitis, cholangitis), elevated LFTs, hepatitis, liver injury.
A very astute reader asked a very simple question: Why is this scary? So I went back and looked at my post. I thought I had completed the post but obviously not. The chart lacked context. So here’s the rest of the post I thought I posted. Welcome to my Senior Moment.
The relatively high labor force participation of Boomers may be beneficial both to them and the wider economy. Some retirement experts emphasize working longer as the key to a secure retirement, in part because the generosity of monthly Social Security benefits increases with each year claiming is postponed. For the economy as a whole, economic growth in part depends on labor force growth, and the Boomers staying in the work force bolsters the latter.
To ease the anxiety of retirement, consider delaying Social Security to get a larger monthly check and perhaps also purchasing immediate fixed annuities. I plan to do both.
Specifically the part of the quote in bold bugged me. I thought to myself, nice plan. But how many people can afford to buy an immediate fixed annuity? I can’t. How many people actually defer Social Security until age 70 to maximize their monthly payments?
Well, get ready for the ugly. It’s Scary Chart time.
Answer: 4%
Why just 4%?
Answer: 97% of people who retired sooner than planned did so due to health and employment issues.
And some retirees will leave the working world straight into a world of high inflation.
Just beyond the guests and beyond the hornbeam trees where I’ve strung fairy lights for the party, I think I can see my future. The grind of work is finally over, my retirement dream cued up. April in Paris! Reading by the sea! Spanish lessons in Antigua so I can better speak to my grandson. I’ll be playing with him, too, in the open-ended days my children rarely knew with me. I’m not saying I deserve a life of ease. But I worked hard to earn my retirement, dropping giant chunks of my salary into company and government pension plans throughout those forty years. It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it.
Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macro-economy is messing with my micro-economy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.
The recent analysis in JAMA focused on serious stomach disorders and GLP-1 agonists.
Researchers in Canada compared safety outcomes for GLP-1 agonists and bupropion-naltrexone, an older class of weight-loss medication. The retrospective analysis included 4144 people with obesity who were prescribed liraglutide, 613 prescribed semaglutide, and 654 prescribed the older treatment. People with a diabetes code in their health record were excluded from the study.
The GLP-1 group had a 9 times greater risk of pancreatitis, a 4 times greater risk of bowel obstruction, and a more than 3 times greater risk of gastroparesis, which causes stomach paralysis. The absolute risks in the GLP-1 group, however, were all about 1% or less per year of GLP-1 use. And semaglutide and liraglutide were not associated with biliary disease, which affects the gallbladder and bile production.
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